Good morning good morning good morning. Man I slept late. Whoops. Only have a few minutes before my 10 AM one-on-one. Jane is behind me eating breakfast. We are back from Boston. Twelve-and-a-half hour drive, she watched educational Youtube videos the whole freakin’ time. Really astounding. I assume she, like, knows astrophysics or something now. Like that montage in The Good Place when she watched all of Chidi’s lectures on Youtube and became smart.

Oh man Hayden Panettiere died. That is really sad. Loved her in (the first season) of Heroes she was really great. I know she was troubled but… alas. Terrible. I liked Hayden. I feel emotionally moved enough by this event that I am compelled to mention it to you even though I have nothing original to say about it. Such is our relationship to the internet.

They found a black guy hanged in Raleigh. Police are saying “no foul play is suspected” but, I mean. It is “being investigated as a suicide,” which is just sort of poor phrasing. Are there still black men who think hanging is a good way to commit suicide? Like really seems like you would maybe choose a different method, just out of some fraternity with your community. It was also right next door to a bunch of government facilities. It is upsetting. And corners of the internet are freaking the fuck out about it. I don’t think the Raleigh police are the worst-of-the-worst and Raleigh is hardly a hotbed of racism compared to the bulk of the south. But still. At least have the racial sensitivity for your first message to be something like “look we don’t have any evidence this is criminal but we are obviously concerned and are going to look into this six ways to Sunday.” “Being investigated as a suicide” has the unfortunate linguistic implication you decided how to investigate it in advance.

Actually, any death by hanging of a black person should probably automatically trigger some in-depth investigation like plane crashes or something. Some specialized unit.

Happy anniversary to my wife. How long have we been married? Ummm… let me do the math. Thirteen years. That is along time but also not. I guess I will just not be impressed for another twenty years, since Sean and Jussi just hit their 20th. I am sad we got married so late it is highly unlikely I live till our 50th anniversary that would be rad. I got her… well, I got her nothing but I get her stuff all the time, so I hereby declare the X-Files LEGO set I gave her 36 hours ago to be her anniversary present, along with, I don’t know, her Bojangles yesterday, and this hour of during-the-work-day babysitting I am about to do. Happy anniversary.

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I’m listening to this guy named Brett Newski. He is a singer songwriter from Wisconsin who spent a ton of time in Vietnam. Actually I don’t really know anything about this guy. What happened is one day I was at a rock show and I was there for the opener, and I thought to myself “I would love a T-shirt that says ‘I’m here for the opener.’” So I looked on the internet, and sure enough, you can get a T-shirt that says “I’m here for the opener.” And the T-Shirt was buy a guy named Brett Newski. And I bought the shirt. And Brett sent along a CD of his album Going Solo Is Better Than Being Alone: Live in Wisconsin. It is, as one may expect, an album recorded live in Wisconsin. Dude has like 12 albums on Discogs, and this isn’t even one of them.

But it’s fun. He is a dude who likes writing songs and singing them and is going for it. What more do you want in the world.

It is nice being home. I only got… um… ten records or so in the mail while I was gone? I mean, don’t get me wrong it is a nice pile but I was kinda thinking it would be more. Whew, I guess.

My Steam Machine arrived, I got it set up last night. In the living room, no keyboard. Still testing. Will write more about that later. Got through all the mail and got the bills paid and went and checked on the studio and took some measurements for the structural engineers (whole saga soon) and checked to make sure the HVAC had been repaired in the clinic for the Neurodivergent Affirming Pediatric Speech Therapist, and went grocery shopping so I could have my stir fry today and did all my credit card transactions and checked Plex and added some movies and got my email all cleared out and generally prepared myself for a fairly busy week of work. I think I am ready to face it.

Speaking of which, time for my one-on-one with Kristen. Back in a bit.

Okay that is done.

And now I gotta find my security guy for my Gaza guy.

Okay that is gone.

I am just a tinkerer in my basement honest. I don’t know what you’re talking about. What? Politically engaged? No, man, not me.

Reading the new (ish) Ian McEwan. It is a cool conceit. It’s a book that takes place in the 2100s (or maybe 2200’s actually, now that I think about it). It involves a historian researching a literary event in the 2000’s. And it talks about our society with the remove that apparently will be necessary to see how utterly self-destructive and self-absorbed we are. The world is fucked, but not, in the 2200’s. We survived as a species, but lost about half of us to myriad different things. Sorta like the “Jackpot” in the William Gibson novels.

There’s also this whole subtext about our digital trail, the idea of what being a historian and autobiographer will be in the future, when the problem is not that there’s not enough source material, it’s that there’s too much. And this is a thing I have been thinking about my whole life. I love that topic. I am hooked, I am hooked.

And, you know. After reading so much Dungeon Crawler Carl, it really is a juxtoposition, a thriling contrast, to read the insanely beautiful, elegant prose of Ian McEwan. That guy can freakin write man. There are sentences that bring tears to my eyes.

Jane Jane Jane I love my daughter. We went to the playground to see one of her friends yesterday. They are moving closer to us that is fun. I cannot fathom that she watched 12 hours of YouTube videos. Really was something. We got home, it was like midnight, she was exhausted, could barely keep her eyes open. But she didn’t want to get out of the car and stop watching YouTube videos.

I finally get her out of the car and she goes inside….

…and lays on the bench and continues to watch YouTube videos.

I do not have a playlist for today but you can enjoy this Gia Margaret KEXP session and if you could, please tell me how she achieves that vocal effect on her voice in the last song.