Good morning hello hi howdy how are you dear friend welcome to Monday. It is raining here. I am happy about that. We could use more rain.

RIP Lindsey. My chief memory of him is watching the first emergency session of congress after the Jan 6 riots, and him shaken and angry and saying he was “done” with Trump and ready to vote for impeachment. We all know how that went. And here we are. One of the people most responsible for this miserable predicament we find the country in. Along with Mitch who is, apparently, alive. I do not succumb to the conspiracy theories that they are Weekend-at-Bernies-ing Mitch. But boy I sure do subscribe to the conspiracy theories that Russia killed off Lindsey.

I like a good conspiracy theory now and again. I’ve more-or-less given up my “MTG is the Capital Bomber” theory so I guess I need a new one now.

Why not.

Cyclospora! For a while I was kinda gung-ho about it. Wanted to see if could handle it. I consider myself somewhat of a pro with diarrhea. Emma and I were talking about it and I said I was flirting with it by continuing to eat lettuce cuz I’m not scared of some endless diarrhea. I wanted to see if I could handle it. Plus I am one of the elite in America who actually has health insurance and a decent doctor so I could just go get the antidote if I couldn’t take it like a manly man.

But then I said I didn’t really want flu-like symptoms, and I didn’t want my stomach to hurt. She looked at me like I was crazy and said that for her diarrhea causes her stomach to hurt intensely. This is not the case for me? I mean, I definitely feel immense pressure in my bowel area (as opposed to stomach) when I am trying to hold it in, but it doesn’t hurt. Emma says it hurts her so bad. So now I am wondering if this is the case for other people, how many, etc. Very mysterious.

I asked the lady at the burger place if people were stopping ordering no lettuce on their burgers now because North Carolina seems to be a hotbed of Cyclospora. She said no, not really. Emma is ordering no lettuce. I am not. I have had so much restaurant lettuce in the last few days. But I think I might be done tempting fate I think I might stop this Russian Kale Roulette (weak joke, I will try harder). I do have like 30 home-grown cucumbers and 5 gallons of home-grown tomatoes now so perhaps its just garden Greek salads for me for the foreseeable future. And stir fries where everything is cooked. But this is poor timing, man. I was just getting really into, like, 80’s-style “tossed salads” that is basically iceberg lettuce and a bunch of vegetables. And now? Blah.

In addition to last week’s reminder about how half of America is poisoned with lead and no one ever got in trouble for it, I am now obsessing once again about how all the tires in the world are poisoning our environment and killing the animals and making the world toxic and how we’re not doing anything about it and if history is any guide, we won’t do anything about it for another 20 years or so. And it is worse for heavier cars, which means Electric cars. I am not super psyched about the fact that this basically is negating my entire existence and I should probably move back to the city and live in a closet and have no artistic aspirations that involve natural reverb chambers. I am fucked, I can’t justify my life at all and I think too much and am lazy so I’m just going to spend the rest of my life in a fit of self-loathing. Perhaps I will make an entire dronemetalgaze album about this topic.

There is, astonishingly, still an article up at the EPA website about this topic. I wonder how long that will last.

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 are listening this morning to the psych rock band Spooky Eyes. Basically I get these emails from a bajillion record labels and whatnot, and they announce new albums, and I put them into my playlist and check them out. This one is a mix between the Oh Sees and the Strawberry Alarm Clock, whom they are covering right at this moment in the album. I learned about this band from Fuzz Club, which does not seem to be a label so much as a really enthusiastic e-commerce outfit dedicated to psych rock. They are from whence I learned about one of my current favorites Mirror Revelations and a recent discovery MAQUINA.. Stet. MAQUINA. the band name includes the period. It is a an editor’s nightmare.

Would listen to a podcast interview with the copy editor of the Fuzz Club website except I do not listen to podcasts anymore.

Maybe I’ll start my podcast back up.

WEEKEND! CHORES!

One day in the attic studio. Got a major section of flooring done, I am out of the hole, I am cruising on the big open floor. I wired up one of the two garage speakers in the ceiling before I covered up that part of the floor. I took a picture for you guys so you could understand the scale of this place. Actually I took a video and this is a still because I cannot find the timer in the Android camera. Or the Samsung Android Flavor camera. Whatever. Fucking Android.

Anyway, the place is big. All told, 2,300 square feet, though (I suspect once I put knee walls in at a reasonable hight (thinking 4 feet? 5?) It will be maybe 2,000 little less. Still! Not a terrible size.

Also spent a little time comforting my paranoia that the nook I am making the control “room” (that area off to the left just visible in the above photo) was wide enough. But it is. Definitely. Probably.

I only did one day in the studio because the garden was getting out of hand, specifically the weeding. So I spent the morning on sunday weeding. About three hours. So much weeding. It wasn’t too hot out so I figured I had no excuse. I immediately got a chigger bite on my arm because I started weeding before changing into gardening clothes. Then I went and changed and got four more on my belly because I did not tuck my shirt into my pants. So many chigger bites. But I don’t care. It was awesome. Weeding is so relaxing and you get to meet your worm neighbors, your little froggy neighbors, snail neighbors. The weed weeds — the ones that grow tall and proud like a middle finger — stick, but the grass weeds do not and every once in a while I would pull something up that smelled delicious. I think it might be volunteer cinnamon basil plants? Not sure but god it smelled great. Also so many volunteer plants. Tons of volunteer tomatoes — some even growing tomatoes! A volunteer grape plant! Volunteer basils galore. Little pine trees the size of your pinky. Just the best. Whole world in there.

I also picked all the red roma tomatoes out of the Birdies’ Bed. Deer have eaten about half of them because insurance is taking forever to fix the gate and the deer can get in right now, but I planted them so insanely densely that they cannot get to them all. They ate all my strawberries. They have eaten the bottom leaves of the apple trees and all my indeterminate tomatoes on vines up to five feet. It’s a bummer. But the tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers (deer don’t eat peppers) are still producing, the greenhouse is filled with herbs and zinnas and it is awesome in there.

I spent Sunday afternoon hauling supplies up the attic. I had ordered 20 more sheets of 3/4” OSB and 15 packages of Safe N Sound. The nice forklift lady put em in my garage, but the Safe N Sound was on top of the OSB and I needed to move that upstairs before I could even begin to process the OSB and cut it to dimensions I can actually fit upstairs. So up and down the stairs I went, 15 times, one pack of Safe N Sound per trip. I would take a break every three packs and, like, fold laundry or do some other chore that did not require climbing. Took about an hour or so but it was worth it. I have a three-day weekend coming up and my hope is that on Friday I cut and move enough OSB I can then spend Saturday and Sunday doing the bulk of the floor you see in the photo above that is not done. If I can get to that back right corner next weekend, I will be happy.

Jane watched a video on factory meat last night and I explained to her this is why we buy organic, don’t keep pork or beef in the house, etc., which is what the video said we should do but she did not seem too convinced. Girl barely eats much meat as it is. I suspect she’ll be a vegetarian before she hits her teens. She’s at a breakfast camp today. And a Pop Star camp. What a combination. What a day. Man being a kid seems awesome.

Sometimes.

No playlist for you today but here is an awesome live performance by Faetooth, a lady metal band I have been obsessed with this year. They are coming to Cat’s Cradle, opening for Die Spitz, which is sold out. They’re the band the guy at the door told me I could just come see and they’d let me in. I am very excited. Shit better check the date on that.

Okay have a lovely Monday. Gah I have meetings now till lunch that sucks.