Winter 2022 Tiny Letter
First Portland winter
This is the start of my first Portland winter. I expect it will get colder and rainier, but so far it has been distinctly tolerable, even pleasant. The sun seems to peek out at random, so if you catch it, it's a good idea to get outside immediately and soak up as much as you can before it disappears. 40°F and misty, right now, feels much more tolerable than 15° with a bitter wind. Sorry, Wisconsin.
I do see the familiar phenomenon of hibernation, though. Overcast and drizzly does not boost energy and encourage people to head outside.
Meanwhile, I try to spot something quirky every day, and my success varies.
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT
Dear friends,
Here's a piece of low hanging fruit for you. If you haven't yet received your omicron-specific vaccine booster, please schedule one today*. I know we all have pandemic fatigue, and wish this business would go away already. But the virus mutates, and the vaccination and booster you received in the past are seriously waning in effectiveness against new variants.
While you're at it, get a seasonal flu shot as well. If you're not elderly, and you don't have a weakened immune system, the seasonal flu probably won't make you very sick if you get it. But this is a case where herd immunity is real. The more of us who get it, the safer everyone else is. Also, it may be possible to catch covid + seasonal flu at the same time. That sounds like a nightmare I'd like to avoid.
Sadly, the public relations for this new booster has been pretty weak. That might be because a shortsighted U.S. Congress hasn't allocated enough money to it. Of course, we relied on our Congress to ensure public health, we probably all be quite dead at this point.
* Autoimmune conditions/other physician-advised strategies excluded, of course.
All hail good tech
Through Music Portland, a local musician advocacy organization, I learned about NearHear.app, a brilliant website that elegantly solves a real problem—what bands should I see tonight?
And it’s this simple! I met with the creator, Liz. She said she started the project for herself, as she couldn’t find any good consolidated show listings. Now she hopes to make it a business, expanding in to other cities. Portland has a lot of shows, but I sense that promotion is weak and disjointed. Liz’s website should help bring more people out to shows, which is great for everyone. Y’all know I’m burned out on tech, and exhausted with projects that solve non-existent problems (your phone can tell you when your toast is done!). This one, however, is just excellent.
Speaking of shows, some new music
NearHear steered me to a Dec 9 show with Goon and Bridal Party. Both bands fit in the indie pop category, though admittedly that’s pretty broad. Goon sounds a bit like Silversun Pickups and Smashing Pumpkins, but more Shoegaze-y—with delicious guitar tones! Bridal Party are a much lighter, they say they make “pop music we like.” Hear for yourself*:
* Can I say again how much I love Bandcamp for artists?
Just too white and nerdy
“Dave” is a story of a privileged, neurotic, East Coast Jew with dreams of rap stardom. The main character is a delightful combination of self-aware, narcissistic, and insightful. The written dialogue is phenomenal, recalling “The Office” and other cringe-inducing shows. I like to say more about this, but I'm having trouble summarizing my take. Watch an episode or two and see if it's for you. Thanks @Elizabeth for the tip. Watch on Hulu.
The non-existent airport to amuse
A man who spent £25,000 on a fake airport sign in mid Wales is bringing the joke to an end after 20 years.
For the past two decades, a billboard for Llandegley International has been a landmark near the Powys village.
It looks like an ordinary road sign, but actually signposts to an airport that only exists in people's imagination.
Once again, my favorite kind of prank. According to the article, people in this small town have come to love the sign. I think up ideas like this all the time, and as soon as someone provides the £25,000, I will happily start erecting all kinds of amusing nonsense.
A museum of mistranslation
On the difficulty of learning scale, Japanese is near the top. The grammar is distinctly different from English, plus you have thousands of kanji, hiragana, and katakana to memorize. This will naturally make translation between the two languages more difficult. In fact, the whole website devoted to Japanese-to-English mistranslations. But this pop-up museum in Tokyo highlights some favorites. Speaking further of pranks, what a joy it would be to make a bunch of the signs and put them up in public places. I think in general, the more uncommon the language, the more inside baseball* the joke is.
* I realize I tend to use the term “inside baseball” quite often. Some have asked me what I mean. It refers to minutia, or specialized knowledge, that either makes a joke work, or make something makes sense because of that knowledge. For example, if I drop some reference to “the trembling is normal,” maybe Alex G. will pick up what I'm puttin’ down, while the “I ♥ modal mixture” bumper sticker is targeted at Paul.
I don't want to be an internet person
An excellent, though rather depressing read, about people who are “very online,” and the high-speed yet vapid culture of this crew. I believe it takes a bit of reflection to make sense of this piece, and to understand the impacts of large numbers of people caught up in discussions and memes about nothing. But I also think it's important, especially as platforms like TikTok optimize their algorithms to keep our youngest folks watching video after video for hours, to the exclusion of real-world interaction. Tik Tik reminds me so much of the show Black Mirror—it feels like a signifier of a near-future dystopia.
I work hard to not be online. But I am always drawn back to internet culture because it moves so much faster than real life. In the best moments, people are so much more honest on the internet; a meme can capture a feeling it would take hundreds of words to explain. Being online is the surest way to feel relevant, even if you lose yourself in the process. Sometimes, I slip up and get “Twitter-brain”—using online words and reciting facts from tweets I don’t really understand. Then I have to delete all my accounts again.
You hear it all the time—“the internet is horrible, but.” But I can learn so much. I need it for work. All my friends are online. Will people forget about me if I am not on the internet?
Internet culture used to be something you engaged with in private. You have your public self, your real self, and then the part of your brain that scrolls mindlessly at the end of the day. But the fixations and personalities of digital-native communities are increasingly spilling out into the real world. Extremely online people are running for Congress. You can raise millions of real American dollars by posting memes. Or, as is the case for most people, you can go online to acquire a set of digitally-tinged delusions which, regardless of their content, feel like the most profound, true thing in the world at the same time they are incomprehensible to someone in regular society.
Trying to stay off the internet feels like pushing back against a wave.
An additional note, reading some comments about this article, folks point out that “Charlotte Fang,” a pseudonym, is responsible for some very toxic and damaging language, perhaps even encouraging suicide. Read with a critical eye.
I don't want to be an internet person, Palladium Mag
Even more music, to close on a high note (is that a Dad joke?)
Foamboy plays “post-disco”, synth-heavy, jazzy, with smooth vocals. I missed their recent show but hope to catch the next one.
Closing quotes
In general, culture is the product of work and struggle. When rich people start showing up, that's when things get homogenous, boring and expensive, and when progress stops. That's when you know things are going to start going downhill. It's not about immigration, it's about class.
— Metafilter commenter
Growing up, when my sisters and I grew too loud and rambunctious, our mother called for a game she’d created for us that saw the one that stayed quiet the longest declared the winner. The game’s name? “Quaker Meeting.”
— NY Times commenter