Good morning good morning my god I hate getting up at 6:30 AM. I mean, I am fine now, I am writing to you and I am happiest when I’m writing to you. But it suuuucks waking up that early. It is unnatural for me. I feel like I can never get to sleep in time, no matter how much I try. And when a weekend comes and I can “catch up” on sleep, I can’t do it. It’s cursed. I feel like it will take years, maybe as much as a decade to go back to “normal” once I no longer have to do this school thing.

Speaking of which, went to McDonald’s this morning, sat there drinking a fridge cigarette reading the news because I am an aspiring lonely old man. There were two Sprinter vans in the parking lot next to each other. Unrelated to each other. That’s not the point here but you don’t see that every day. A spirit of sprinters.

There was also a gaggle of teenage high school sports girls there. With a teacher. And you know… out here in the suburbs, this is a thing. At your Starbucks or McDonald’s or Bojangles or whatever at 7:30 in the morning on a weekday, you will often find a gaggle of teenage girls. Ripped ones in sports clothing. Sports teams n cheerleaders shit. What gives, man? I thought we moved high school later because these people needed their sleep. A bunch of em wake up and do sports anyway? WTF.

I fucked up and wasted 7,000 points on a McGriddle. McGriddles are maybe the most disgusting food in America. I can’t even smell them. Nasty. I gave it back. Didn’t eat.

In describing my 3D chess metaphor from yesterday’s edition to members of the GMHHAY slack, I realized that the correct number of dimensions when talking about political mastermindedness nowadays is, in fact, 4D. I distinctly remember there was a time where the Star Trek 3D chess game was used as a political metaphor, but ever since the famed “Trump is playing 4D chess” meme, I guess we have had dimension inflation in our chess metaphors. I should have used 4D chess. I regret the error.

Some days I think about Laura Logan and I get really sad. Just needed to get that off my chest.

You know what I can’t stand anymore? Escalades, Navigators and Suburbans. Especially black ones, with tainted windows, Uber+ style, owned my suburban moms. Makes my blood boil. Irrationally so. Burn em all. Here let me whip up a quick meme.

Europe invited Canada to be an “associate member.” My god the future is coming at us fast. I wish I could be an associate member. I hereby declare the republic of Chore House and we would like to be an associate member of Europe please.

Speaking of Canada Katy Perry is a thing I think about a lot. Not enough to Google it or anything, but, ambiently. Do I have it right that she is now married to a former hottie prime minister of Canada? And, like, the queens love her? And, like, she groped Justin Bieber when he was 18? And, like, played for the Queen or something? And, like, she hasn’t written a hot jam in a decade but my god there were some hot jams before that? Katy Perry is a whole thing. I think I would enjoy sitting at a bar and pounding shots with Katy Perry. Until I didn’t.

Speaking of pop singers I do not know Katy Perry’s stance on Palestine, I guess I will just have to wait for her to put someone brave like Macklemore on her tour. I have an old crush friend who played guitar in Macklemore’s band when he was huge and said he was a solid dude, and so did many of my Seattle friends, so I have always been positively disposed toward Benjamin Hammond Haggerty. And I will even go so far to say that that big hit he had back in the day was an awesome bop. And I would go so far to say that the shit he said on stage with that Brother without a Banner (IYKYK) was so anodyne and sweet that it really makes it clear how fucked up the world is these days.

To all of my Jewish brothers and sisters: criticism of Israel, criticism of apartheid, being against genocide in no way is a criticism of you. My message is for peace; love for all human beings to be treated with dignity, respect, and equality.

So I say Free Palestine, I say Free Lebanon, I say Free Cuba, I say Free Congo, Free Sudan, I say Free all people in America living in fear of this terrorist organization, ICE. None of us will be free until we are all free."

Well shit lock that guy up.

What a fucking world, what a fucking world.

Man I cannot even tell you how bad I want an “I AM NOT COMPLICIT” shirt.

Ed Sheeran, man. It’s stunning how badly he played that. It’s almost like no one should listen to crisis comms professionals for the next four years, at least. The profession has some catching-up-to-reality to do.

Hrm seems that someone already sells an “I am not complicit” shirt but this does not seem to be recent and does not capture the necessary ironic tone.

Speaking of Israel, I learned today that America paid for and co-developed the much-lauded, Israeli-built Iron Beam laser defense system. Paid outright for half, financed the other half, did the bulk of the development, handed it off to them, they finished it, wouldn’t give rest of the tech to complete it back to us, and promptly sold it to the Chinese. Fucking awesome.

Oh and we just financed another $2 point something billion of weapons for them. Like they needed the financing.

I bet the interest rate was better than a millennial can get on a mortgage.

I would like to know more about the dude who made the framers stick the Bill of Rights in there. I mean I’ve read like three books about the constitutional convention and the bill of rights, and even books solely dedicated to individual assorted amendments so you’d think I’d know something about this but I do not. I remember basically the framers were like “no it’s cool, the constitution says the only powers the state has are the powers listed in this document and we even have a ‘powers not delegated’ clause it’s fine.” And this dude or dudes was like “naw bro, shit’s gonna be bad we need to be explicit about this cuz they’re totally going to take away free speech rights and shit.”

Can you imagine how fucked we’d be without that dude? I mean the government routinely loves to take our speech away can you imagine how gonzo they’d be for it without a bill of rights?

Hats off, contrarian framer dude.

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!

I’m listening to Sinéad’s big band album Am I not Your Girl. I have recently rounded out my Sinead vinyl collection, picking up the affordable reissues of this one, Universal Mother and I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss. I now have every Sinead album ever released on vinyl on vinyl. Feels good. However, there have never been vinyl releases at all of Faith and Courage, Sean-Nós Nuance, She Who Dwells, or Theology. This is a travesty. It’s been three years since her death you’d think her labels would have gotten on this. Boo.

I don’t love the big band album because I don’t love big band music because I am — or was, I guess, in 1992 — too serious and goth and existential to think dancing around a fancy ballroom in a suit is a legitimate pastime and this album is the album that made me stop listening to Sinéad back in the day after picking up every album before this. I tried to get back into her with Universal Mother at the time but something in me had changed. Now I love Universal Mother, and I find something subversive and tough in her renditions of songs like Why Don’t You Do Right and Bewitched… And if I am being honest, shit, I learned about half of these songs from this album. So, I guess I owe you, Sinéad. Again, in another way. And I mean Sinéad just didn’t want to be pigeonholed as an alternative singer. I get that. I hate being pigeonholed. Respect.

My Daisy Chain Festival merch has still not arrived. I ordered maybe four hours before Emma did and she got hers a week ago. The Daisy Chain subreddit is filled with people in my position. Seems pretty clear the fulfillment for this merch drop has been an utter catastrophe. I am curious who she used. I will find out once my cool shirt finally shows up and I can reverse-lookup the shipping address. In the meantime Emma and Jane are prancing around the house in cool Daisy Chain Fields shirts and I stuck here in my spiffing new Pulp Live! shirt which is, I must admit, pretty awesome but not keeping me from being jealous.

Jane came downstairs this morning and climbed in my lap and said “I am a cat” and started purring. I was happy about this because we had a big argument last night about Youtube and it sucked. I mean, my side of the entire argument was me saying “I don’t want to argue about this” over and over in various degrees of agitation which apparently makes me the worst dad ever. But this morning it was fine.

Until I said “You have the best cat purr of any human I know.” And this was the absolute wrong thing to say.

This happens frequently where you give Jane a compliment and she gets upset and she never explains why, so I resigned myself to familiar confusion.

But instead she actually explained herself: “The first time you said that, I really liked it. And I kinda liked it the second time, and even a little bit the third time. But now I don’t like it.”

Hrm, well, you know. Actually that’s a fair point! Thank you for explaining!

Last night at dinner we had “small talk class” where I instructed Jane on how to make small talk and Emma played a stranger she just met. It is stunningly difficult to get kids to remember to ask people questions! But she made progress! We had a little question flag and I would wave it whenever there was a lull in the conversation or she had rambled too long about herself and then she would ask question a question.

I don’t know how we came up with this exercise. But as it went on it occurred to me that this is a major skill humans need to learn and there is no point in school where they teach it at all. I bet with that single hour of focused learning on this topic Jane is now, like, four years or more ahead of all her friends.

I am kinda wigged out about this and how many other topics like this exist that we’re not even thinking about.

Anyway we have a W Hotel In A Better, Alternate Universe playlist today, and man I sure wish I lived in that universe these days. Provided my family is there. I kinda need my family.

Oh shit there are two Tricky songs on it. Oh well. That’s fine, given I’m (hopefully) seeing him next month. A friend told me yesterday that she saw Tricky in Philly on one of his early tours and he smoked a shit ton of PCP on the stage. She didn’t know what it was until an older friend of hers told her. That is kind of bonkers. Never heard of such a thing. More power to you Tricky, I guess.

I am very into this new Ibibio Sound Machine album. I believe they are on our local label Merge so maybe they’ll tour. Shit I might have already missed it. Also into the new Ibeyi, who played here like a decade ago and I didn’t go and I still regret it. Joan as Police Woman used to live in Boston when I did and I was so utterly enthralled and intimidated by her I still kinda am. The new Suki is kinda meh but it deserves another listen. Etc etc etc. eh what does it matter? Ever since I switched to Apple Music from Spotify, no one listens to these. Very sad. I am switching back to Spotify soon. End of year ish. I’m not happy about it, they still suck. But Apple Music has been borderline unusable for a year now, and they do zero development on it. Spotify works with every third-party streaming and speaker system and car under the sun — Rivian, Wiim, Unify, Sonos, you name it. Apple can’t be bothered with any of those because they lock you into HomePods, and then don’t even put support for them in Apple Music on Android. It’s all a cruel joke.

Ok I am going to go do some work now I guess. Be a fitter happier member of society and not dream of binges and sleep and euphoria and true happiness and all of us being free someday. Preach, Macklemore.