Hi hi hi good morning yay it’s Friday how lovely. I am ready for hot Friday action. Walmart and recycling and pool company bills and and and, I don’t know what else who can say. Bugging the structural engineer about the studio. Asking the pool company accountants how to interpret our K1s. Maybe even doing a bit of the ‘ole day job who can say. Ah I see our annual security training is on the calendar for today. Welp. That is always kinda a good time. Our security training guy is funny. I like him.

Hey question for my readers: has anyone worked with this heavy-duty, outdoor Cat-6 cable that has, like, goo inside of it and really really stiff wires? Specifically, I inherited like 5 half-spools of this stuff from the storage facility build. Do I just… wipe the goo off? Kill my hands straightening the wires like normal cat 6? Is there a special tool? That goo is scary.

Some clarifications on the Foursquare stuff from yesterday since apparently I am the only person to post any details about it? I don’t know, man, I haven’t signed a document for Foursquare in, like, 15 years, and this thing just landed in my email with zero context. I do not see how I could possibly have an obligation for confidentiality. Anyway, as I read this a little bit more closely, and a friend helped out, I was mistaken in two points: they were not profitable. I mean, they should have been. They had solid revenue. Seems like it would not have been hard at all to make them profitable looking at the P&L, but I guess what do I know I am only seemingly the only person in tech who likes to make companies profitable. And they were not valued at $800-something million, Infillion will be valued that much, at some future financing, which in lieu of getting anything out of this deal I am welcome to invest in Lol. Okay. Oh and yes, they wiped out all the common, too, not just the preferred. There was a sentence for each, I just quoted the one related to my shares because I am all about me me me.

I am not particularly sad about this deal. Yet. There is a big TBD. What will become of Swarm. I mean I don’t use Swarm much anymore but I still believe it’s a nifty little app for people who go out, and it could use some love. I do not think Infillion especially wants it? If they sold it and some weirdo old-internet lover bought it, that could be cool for it. And if they kill it, then I will get sad and nostalgic and write some long-winded nostalgic tribute. Or I would have, in the old days.

But right now I gotta tell you about this fucked up popcorn. Look. I like buttered popcorn. And yes, I like making it, and I have this awesome nifty popcorn popper. But sometimes you need bagged shit. And it is getting harder and harder to find bagged buttered popcorn. Circle K makes a good brand. Smart Food does but no one sells it.

So when This Harris Teeter (aka Kroger) house-brand “Corn on the Cob with Butter” popcorn, I. Well, for weeks I ignored it. I just want basic butter.

But then I started thinking about it.

I mean, how different from basic-ass buttered popcorn could it be? Popcorn was corn on the cob once, right?

So I threw caution to the wind and bought a bag.

Reader: it is fucked up. It tastes like fucking corn on the cob. It is so weird. And yeah, it’s corn, but it has to be chemicals making it taste like this, right? It is too disturbing. It evokes massive cognitive dissonance. It sits right in some deeply uncomfortable culinary uncanny valley. It is freaking me the fuck out.

It may be the single-most distubing thing I have ever eaten.

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 this morning to the new Carly Rae Jepsen, the two-disc Day and Night. Which is maybe a compilation or something? Nope. She just put out a really long new album. Good for her. I could edit this down to one of the greatest pop albums ever, and even as-is it is pretty f’n solid. Especially fond of “Amalfi Coast.” Carly Rae does not get enough respect in pop circles. This thing didn’t even chart in America? That’s some BS right there.

But Rick, you say, it’s Taylor Swift release day and you are usually on it why are you not listening to the Encore songs right now?

Cmon man I have already been up for two hours what do you think I have been doing with my time?

I am going to go ahead and assume that Taylor is a perceptive and empathatic human being and that “Patient Zero” and “Pink Clouding” are actually two songs about the same breakup, from both points of view and they guy wasn’t actually some single-faceted, self-absorbed asshole and was, in fact, “pink clouding” in the relationship and he still wonders years later how to tell you sorry and that he didn’t want to let you down.

Because otherwise it would be pretty weird to write both those songs and not notice the, ahem, rather contradictory way they view the validity and ethics of breaking up. Right? Right? Sure they both use the pronoun “he” but that’s because she is writing in the third person in these songs, right?

Right?

Babylon’s my favorite. It’a got a little bit of that “small town girl heads to the city” vibe, and I like it’s sweet melancholy.

Cleveland! is fucking hilarious and you go girl, fuck the world, you’re in love, and YOU TELL THEM. I mean, is it a song in any practical sense? Maybe, maybe. But it’s a hell of an Instagram screed.

Also: props to Genius.com for already owning the SEO on the lyrics to these songs.

Re-watched Escape from New York last night and it held up. Fun movie. I love how everyone in the world knows who Snake Plisskin is. We have so many criminals in America we have to give them the entire island of Manhattan, but they all know each other. Loved the cheesy computer graphics. Loved the terrorists at the beginning that hijacked Air Force One man they did not speak a single lie. Kurt Russell, Harry Dean Stanton, Isaac Hayes, Ernest Borgnine, I mean come on man you can’t go wrong with a cast like that.

I vaguely remember watching Escape from LA as a kid and being equally satisfied but I am dubious the sequel will hold up in the cold light of the 21st century dystopia we call home.

Jane was pretty good last night. Had gymnastics, understood we could only watch a couple videos. Watched one about the woman who cured her cancer by injecting viruses into her body that shit is so insane. We’ve watched that one a couple times now. She has been staying up so late reading. Like… past ten? Emma turns her light off, she turns it back on. She doesn’t seem to be affected by it, but it is a hot topic of consideration between Emma and I. Emma believes we should make sure she is getting enough sleep. I am of the belief that she would… self regulate? Sleep if she was tired? But maybe I am wrong? It’s interesting. Mine and Emma’s viewpoints clearly both stem from our personal experiences with sleep: I fall asleep easily, Emma does not. So I “do not worry about it,” and Emma does. But of course: I could be wrong! Maybe I fall asleep easily because my parents… did something right? Or some environmental thing that we are not mimicking? I don’t know! It is impossible to know!

Every parent is flying blind I swear to god.

Don’t make me watch a TikTok.

Justa mix for you today. There is “new” Morphine. They took some old recordings and finished them. I am okay with this. I pre-ordered the record. First song is very promising. Cautiously optimistic. This “This is Lorelei” gentleman is a good songwriter. I like the new Orville Peck more than the last couple. I love the new Emma Ruth Rundle. I do not particularly love the new Echo and the Bunnymen but the full album has a couple good songs on it. This Panic Shack band is a great time and the funnest new thing I have listened to in a while.

All right friend have a lovely Friday. See you on Monday for CHORETALK.