Good morning hello hi howdy how are you? Good weekend? Survive the hurricane? Man that thing looked rough as it was about to hit the shore but haven’t heard anything since. Did it peter out? Did it DESTROY and the libtard media didn’t report it because it was in Alabama? Mysterious.

I would like it known that last night I went to bed at 9:30, didn’t read any of my book (currently The Book: A Cover-to-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time by Keith Houston and I am enjoying it very much), didn’t doomscroll, just put my head on my pillow and lay there. Figured it would take me hours to go to sleep as my brain churned away at the day’s events. Didn’t care. Just laid there.

Reader, I fell asleep in less than fifteen minutes. SO MUCH SLEEP.

Didn’t make me feel particularly more well rested this morning, but I do feel noticeably less miserable.

Had a great idea the other day you read to hear it? Couples Therapy! Not, as normally defined, a couple going to therapy, but, rather, one person going to a couple doing therapy. The more I listen to friends talk about inter-relationship challenges, the more I realize that it would be really useful for the couple to have both a man and a woman’s perspective during therapy. It could make a fortune! Literally. Therapy’s expensive enough, let alone doubling it. Still, great idea. I am convinced. Someone do a peer-reviewed study.

Left $20 of Boar’s Head turkey on the counter for, mmm, gonna say 5 hours? I can’t eat it, right? This is, as you know, a popular topic here at GoMoHHAY. Well, it was with rice. And fried rice. And broth. But I assume this rule applies to deli meats as well? Did I blow $20? Man. I am always blowing $20. Every fucking day I swear to god.

Blew $20 on tickets to a show on Sunday I didn’t go to. Local show in Boston (HAPPY BIRTHDAY AD WE LOVE YOU). But I guess I didn’t really blow that because I gifted them to my friend Ivel and I saw her in the pictures, so that worked out. Almost blew $70 on Tricky tickets for Monday that I forgot I had, but the AXS ticket app is pretty good about selling your tickets right in the app. I sold them for face value. Last time I had looked prior to that, tickets were going for about 4x face value.

Now, you tell me: do you think AXS really sold my tickets for face value, or did they jack ‘em up and pocket the spread?

I think we know the answer to that.

They did sell fast, though. So, hey, $70 not wasted. I feel good about that.

More insanity in politics this week. Let me see if I have this right: congress passed a diesel embargo against Russia, the world broadly held to it, then Trump decided to break it and buy diesel from Russia, violating the embargo he had signed just a few months earlier, in honor of Lindsey Graham. Lindsey Graham’s nepotistic sister knows nothing about any of this.

Meanwhile, Russia is supporting Iran in a war that we started against them, so now we are actually funding a war against ourselves.

FOUR-DEEE-CHESSS-DOT COM.

Elon Musk has put more than $250 million into the mid-terms supporting Republicans and they are going to lose lose lose. Probably. Assuming he doesn’t use his space lasers and turn off Starlink for the Ukrainians who are generously keeping Russian propaganda bots offline.

Could this world get any stupider.

Meanwhile!

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Listening to Sonic Youth this morning: Murray Street. Was on my wantlist for eleven years, this first-pressing vinyl copy. Found a great copy, near-mint, sonically cleaned, only $60. Fantastic. Underrated album, Murray Street.

And yes, this is a coincidence, distinct from me lucking out and finding a great first-edition copy of Experimental Jet Set Trash No Star last week. Weird. Different sellers.

Now I just need Washing Machine to complete my Sonic-Youth-albums-released-on-vinyl-while-they-were-an-active-band collection. So close, so close.

Man I don’t even know if I have ever even listened to Washing Machine. I kinda thought they “sold out” for a while there and ignored them for about 2 years before I randomly happened to see the A Thousand Leaves tour and thought “oh, yeah, no, they’re still amazing.”

All those kids wandering around Harvard Square in 1995 in Washing Machine shirts. Wigged me out. What was I thinking.

CHORES. Got a good bit of choring done in this painfully short weekend. Two days what kind of weekend is that what is this the 20th century? We’re supposed to have, like, four day weekends or five now according to Keynes. Man. That guy god that one wrong. Oh right by the way congratulations Robert E Hall and Michael Woodford for their Nobel Prize in economics today.

Had to replace two older G3-flex Unifi cameras I had placed on the patio and driveway of Chore House with some newer G5 dome cameras, because I need flex-shaped cameras for the gate camera project during Chore Week and Ubiquiti is not selling any flex-style cameras at the moment. Wasn’t too hard, though, the wiring is the hard part. Swapping out cameras is easy. And Emma helped me with that, so that was nice.

Spent a good time on the floor, back on my floor shit, working on the east side of the house. There is a giant HVAC junction box I am going to have to move around a lot, which is a pain, and there is a ton of spray foam overspray I gotta scrape off everything. And am I going to need to drill a hole to the exterior for the speakers, AP, and camera on the east side of the house.

AND I need to tape the floor where every joist is because I got a bit of a chicken-and-egg going on with where I hope, one day, to put the spiral staircase from the garage straight to the studio. I don’t think I can afford this right now, but I want to do all the prep to make for an easy installation down the road. I want this spiral staircase for two reasons: one, I need a hole large enough to winch a piano up to the studio. Alan the Piano Guy thinks he can get a baby grand around the tight, twisting main staircase, but I am dubious. So I figure we can winch one up before we put the staircase in, worst case. But really I want it as economic backup, so if any sort of emergency happens in our life, we can rent out Chore House’s main floor to nurses – profitable endeavor here in UNC land – and I can still get to the studio from the garage, thus giving them privacy in the house.

Also if I get old and infirm I can swap it out with one of those awesome forced air elevators.

But I’m not even sure if there’s headroom, where it would go, where it would land in the garage, etc. And the only way to suss that out is to map it out on the floor. So, lots of taping as I go. Lots of taping. Boy it sure would be nice if they made masking tape the same width as a 2×4.

Also got the new speakers installed in the living room, thus moving one step closer to completing that project. It was a pain in the ass. Involved carving some space out of studs. Never mind how much. If the entire house collapses, it’s not my fault. But my god, they sound so good now. The Chore House living room is a lovely listening experience. I mean, not, like, audiophile, but better than it was.

Ran out of OSB sheets up in the attic, so spent the rest of my time sawing and hauling my remaining OSB sheets. I cut them down to 4×4 in the garage, because getting a 4×8 sheet of 7/8 OSB upstairs alone is impossible, and then lug them upstairs. Made like 20 trips. It is exhausting. So exhausting. I have to take a lot of breaks. But it is done.

Went to the hardware store and procured everything I need for one of the more complex projects of CHORE WEEK, which is fixing the turtle dock cam and re-running the ethernet cable to the pond. I half-assed it last time, the ethernet cable was outdoor rated but barely. I didn’t bury it, I didn’t put it in wiring loom. And now it doesn’t work. I assume a squirrel chewed through the cable or something. Also the junction box where all the CAT6 cable comes out of the house is all fucked up and cracked because I half-assed that too.

So during Chore Week I am going to completely pull all the cable out of the house, make a new junction box system, re-reun all the cable back in the house, and run a new cable to the turtle dock, in wiring loom this time, and buried. And I have this super-posh outdoor heavy duty cable I inherited from the Boat and RV build. Has gel in it. Three layers. It is going to be SO FUN. Probably the chore I am most excited about.

Also I did not take pictures of any of this. Because why would I.

Finished my book about the great LSD bust, Operation White Rabbit: LSD, the DEA, and the Fate of the Acid King by Dennis McDougal. It was highly informative, but a mess from a writing perspective. Assumed you knew way more about the situation than you did. Would pick up things mid-story, would drop them, abruptly change topics. I had to highlight the subject of every sentence to make sure I wasn’t going crazy. Which is, upon reflection, pretty much what the dude who recommended the book to me told me it would be. But as he also promised, it was highly informative, and mostly correlated with my memory of the situation at the time. THOUGH there is a fun conspiracy: according to the acid kind, he didn’t really make all the acid in America, and it dried up after he got arrested not because they took him down, but because all the other major LSD manufacturers — a gloriously shadowy cabal called “The Seven” — went underground because a) they weren’t sure if the “Acid King” turned on them and b) to make it look like he was a more major player than he actually was. Also the DEA sucks and their main witness was a sociopath who tortured people.

Jane was pretty good this weekend! No major tantrums! We had a great time! She kept me company in the attic on Saturday. Was gonna help but decided to draw instead, that was fine. I enjoyed the company. Family took a trip to the new Chapel Hill Barnes and Noble. That was fun. The good bookstore on Franklin is gone (RIP) and the other good one is faaaar. I bought an Edward Gorey book, Jane got a Babysitters Club book. They have a decent if milquetoast vinyl selection. They had some LEGO and it has been a while since I could just roam the stacks and look at interesting new releases, I enjoyed that. Jane did too. This morning in the car she starred Sister Nancy, Star99 and Sisters of Mercy, so that is all a win.

She is obviously lulling us into a false sense of complacency to totally emotionally fuck us up with a giant fit any day now.

Got a moodyt and quiet playlist for you today. Lots of fun stuff. Recently discovered Blaze Foley. Why did I discover him. Dead outlaw country guy, murdered over a tax bill or something, wrote some famous song. OH RIGHT. “Clay Pigeons” by John Prine. Except it’s not by John Prine it’s by Blaze Foley. Also happy birthday, John Prine, RIP, that new Demos album that came out this week is real good. Very into this SOFIA ISELLA lady she is a real tour de force. Love the new Will Shef and new Beck and new Beth Orton. VERY EXCITED about the new Ex:Re. Preordered that shit.

Okay until tomorrow, friend. Four days until CHORE WEEK WOOOOOOOO.