#21: Headaches

Apt that this is coming out on Labor Day

September 06, 2021

Actual Updates

This one’s coming in a little late, folks, and the reason for that is that this past week I have been on vacation. You would think that would give me lots of time to write my frivolous little newsletter, but the reason for the vacation is that Hap’s school has been on break this week as well, so we have been doing a lot of ACTIVITIES and also playing a lot of “build a jump out of an old baseball card album and a couple books and then chuck monster trucks off it,” as well as the classic “dragging a wagon1 around the yard and stopping at all the ‘stations’.” So, in short, there’s no time during the day, and at night I’m so wiped out that I fall asleep on the couch without fail every single time before getting any writing done.

Oh, but do you want to know what one of the activities was? On Monday, which was technically the first day of the vacation (we’ll get to the weekend preceding it in a sec), we spent all afternoon/evening in the ER, because Hap fell down the stairs and got a massive bump on his forehead. He is fine, the doctors who saw us pointed out that having sat in the ER waiting room for 4 hours actually was good because it counted as “observation,” and since he hadn’t gotten worse (in fact, he was back to his normal self by the time we got there and was mostly suffering from extreme boredom by the time he was seen) and hadn’t exhibited various warning signs, we were good to go home. Other plus sides include learning various things about pediatric head injuries (I love it when doctors assume I am not stupid and moreover that I would like to know the whys and wherefores behind things, I 100% always do), I also learned that I have the children’s classic I Have to Go committed nearly to memory, since I “read” it to Hap while we were waiting without benefit of the book. But now every time he walks down the stairs I lose another month off my life.

But I promised you I’d talk about the weekend prior, and so I shall. A huge tonal shift, because while the Stairs Incident was probably one of the worst experiences of my life (at least until it became clear he was going to be ok), the Saturday preceding was, and I’m not exaggerating here, one of the best. So, you may or may not be extremely well aware that we’re big fans of nearby(-ish) brewery Bone Up, we met the founders at a pre-taproom popup they were doing in a liquor store while we happened to be in there buying something to take to a friend’s house, and when they gave us their card, we whimsically(?) gave them our air guitar trading cards. Fast forward a few months to when they opened their taproom, and we swung by and found out they had put up our cards on their bulletin board and remembered us and everything, and from then on we just went there all the time. Yes the beer is good. That is sort of not the point, though? I mean, it is, but we aren’t living through a historic good-beer drought; the point is that they’re fantastic people, and everyone who works there is cool, the place is extremely hangoutable, there are skulls everywhere, the tunes tend metalwards, and it’s just friendly. I don’t know. I just like them so much. So we’ve gone there a lot; I even nursed Hap in there a few times since that’s one time you know you’re safe in having a beverage (making this probably the only brewery that has probably seen my boob), and he is now obsessed with their be-mustachioed skull mascot, Horatio.

This is all background, really, or an extended ad for the place, you be the judge. The point, the point is that they have a birthday party for the brewery every year, and they have bands play at the party, and this year Matt’s band, the Guilloteenagers, got to play. They closed the show out Saturday night (it was a multi-night party this year!), and while they played it started raining, then pouring, and the crowd was undaunted and kept right on partying, screaming along (me), and having a very small mosh pit (not me). Their shows are always kind of bonkers, and they went full bonk this time - there was a cloak involved, and two fake-out song beginnings, and one cover that drew everyone out from inside and added at least one person to the very small mosh pit. And then, and then, for the very last song, they called up Liz, one of the cofounders, and surprised her with a song about her own nickname and had her help sing it, and I was losing it. I was so overjoyed to be at a show again, and all these other things made it that much better. Especially the rain. I’ll go to more shows, dea volente, but I don’t know if I’ll ever duplicate that feeling.

As to what else happened this month, if we’re friends on Twitter then I guess you already know about the Possum Saga. But if you don’t, here’s the thread:

And now: onwards. Back to work on Tuesday, after my non-vacation vacation, where I will panickedly try to catch up on a week’s worth of work and consider never leaving again. Why do it if it’s so stressful? I get yelled at about this a lot but it isn’t workaholism - it’s fear. And vacations are supposed to replenish you, but it’s like pouring into a cup with a hole in it; the vacation itself affords me no rest, and then I go back to play catch-up on zero reserves.

Some links

Okay, I know I’ve banged the drum about Pipe Wrench before, but it continues to be incredible, so I’m going to continue to bang it. This month’s issue is focused around the kind of deeply interconnected historical piece that really bullseyes me specifically: an examination of the disappearance of a lake in California, and how this involved settler colonialism, genocide, environmental catastrophe, all of which you might anticipate in a piece of this nature, but also agricultural economics, industrialization in Britain, enclosures, and how the population of Manchester stayed on this side of starvation. It’s exceptional. Please read it. Ghost Acres: Tulare Lake and the Past Future of Food

Not to keep hollering on about Pipe Wrench, but one of their update newsletters they sent out in mid-month was about how to fix the Olympics: If You Hated “Cruel and Unusual,” You Might Like “Reasonable and Humane”

Linked in that piece, but worth highlighting on its own in case you didn’t click through to that, is this piece about why every sport in the Olympics is the best, which is objectively correct. What I Learned from Watching Every Sport at the Olympics

This is astounding. Like, if you think it’s going to be a kind of “look, it’s not that bad” deal, IT IS NOT. It is legitimately pro drunk driving. As in, it is in favor of it. Even in 1984 this was wild. Check Out This 1984 Pro-Drunk-Driving Opinion Piece the NYT Published

This is interesting on its own merits, of course, but the most interesting part to me was the bit about how optimism bias, first of all, exists (people… expect things to turn out well, apparently?), and second of all, the only group who doesn’t experience it is - aha! - people with depression. I’ve been saying for years that I am simply being realistic and finally I have my vindication! How Your Brain Tricks You into Taking Risks During the Pandemic 

Queer fashion as resistance! The idea of a queer aesthetic in general! It was inevitable that I would include this article, I guess. From Leather Daddies To Drag Race, Dissecting The Revolutionary History Of The Queer Aesthetic

Okay, the first sentence is… something, but stick with it. Also, time is what? Fake. Why Time Slows Down When We’re Afraid, Speeds Up as We Age, and Gets Warped on Vacation

I’m trying to pare down our stuff too, not because I’m facing down my own mortality in particular, although I suppose it’s always good to be prepared, but more because of moving, and just because I’m exhausted by owning so much trivial shit. This is an excellent piece, though. I mean: “Every table had a drawer, and every drawer had a story—none of them interesting.” Ann Patchett, man!! How to Practice

I am a strong believer that it was much easier to hide a secret life back in the old days - it seems like every other person had a great-great-grandfather (it’s always the men) with a secret second family - and this story is in that same vein. People just… made stuff up and got away with it! Everything Was Fake But Her Wealth

Partly this is a “just for the title” link, but also it’s fascinatingly historical. Two rival health gurus in the early 20th century, both obsessed with poo, fighting each other over what was correct, poopwise! One was a cereal baron with truly loony ideas around sex! The 70s also occurred! Poop Wars!

Pros of this article: the science of recognizing smells, the word “e-nose” being used, the title’s Mad-Lib-osity in general. Cons of this article: the military/cop column of the graph showing who’s interested in digital nose technology. I mean, no way that could be misused!! Is a Giant Purple Nipple the Digital Nose of the Future? 

Okay, so let me preface this one: the other day, I looked up a guy I had known3 back in high school, and I didn’t find him online, but I did find his mom, a journalist, and she’s very good and would have been interesting even if I had never known her son, so I started following her on Twitter. She writes a lot about housing, which is a hot topic in Vancouver, obviously, and pretty much right after I started following her, she shared a link to this story (not by her!). It’s pretty scandalous. Canada has one of those buy-your-way-in programs for rich people to get fast-tracked citizenship, because they expect to make a lot of money in taxes, but apparently some of those rich people were then proceeding to declare incomes in the low triple digits. Per year. And yet buying up houses and helping turn Vancouver into an impossibly unaffordable city. And this was known about and looked the other way on! It’s appalling! Canada Tax Agency Reveals Secret Study Linking Home Prices to Millionaire Migration, Five Years after Freedom-of-Information Request

I have never had an opinion on Jimmy Buffett, but aside from the fact that you should always read anything Jaya Saxena writes just as a general rule, I saw this article described as a “socialist review of Margaritaville” and that is not even enough to encompass how great it is, although it was enough to get me to click on the link immediately and I hope that’s the case for you too. Margaritaville and the Myth of American Leisure

In which I learned what a Polynya is, although unfortunately in the context of it, and in a larger sense all of us, being completely fucked. Climate Change Puts North Water Polynya, a Source of Arctic Life, in Imminent Danger

Tunes I’ve been listening to lately

Instagram pals may recall that I recently posited that Eight Arms to Hold You might be a perfect album and I'm pretty sure I stand by that.

So this is a Supersuckers cover of a song I've never heard in the original, and in fact this cover only exists on this benefit album for the West Memphis Three, but it’s so perfect and sad. Maybe one day I'll get to sing it with a band. Cover of a cover, probably losing quality like a photocopy of a photocopy.

Fun fact: Moist singer David Usher looks, or at least looked in the 90s, like a budget Keanu Reeves. Anyway, I just got back into them, got the first two albums (aka the good ones) and am reliving my youth for some reason. My youth sucked, in large part! But I guess there was a decent soundtrack to its sucking.

This month’s top 5: Ways in which Spaced (1999) is very 1999

So yeah, we’re rewatching it, and it is a time capsule, which is both entertaining and deeply insulting to me, insofar as it means I am very, very old.

  1. landlines!!

  2. everyone smoking!! inside, even!

  3. some jokes that did NOT age well, even when they were intended to paint the speaker as kind of insensitive - now you’d write that joke for a character whom you wanted to show as a massive asshole

  4. regular people just like, throwing their hair into space buns and going to raves, and then going back to their regular lives

  5. hating The Phantom Menace as a plot point, although that one feels like it’s still relevant

Okay! So, now we have reached the “me telling you what to do with your money” section, which is basically the same as the “close the newsletter with a brief burst of rage” section except that it lets you actually do something about it, so please give all of it to any of the following, or split it up amongst all of them, I’m not fussy.

Okay, going to stay mad until I see you again, bye!

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