#52: Super Nofriendo

Actual updates

I took a day off this month!

That’s newsworthy in and of itself, and it was really lovely - I spent the morning swigging tea (as normal) and catching up on my reading (not as normal) - but the reason I mention it is that I spent the rest of the day doing something very cool: a friend¹  and I went to the Waterworks Museum, which is delightful and gorgeous (especially in the sense of being from the era where even machinery was made beautiful, to show off, but also because there are huge windows letting in big beautiful slabs of light, reminding you that this was how the workers were able to see what they were doing before widespread bright electric light.

While it’s a cool spot in and of itself, once thing I saw there that sent me down a mental rabbithole wasn’t one of the displays. It was a sullen teen, coming in alone, probably to write some bad poetry or something like that, and my heart exploded for her - I’ve been the sullen teen skulking off to someplace I think is beautiful but it feels like no one else cares about (call me, Point Grey Road foreshore at low tide! call me, Wreck Beach but in the winter when the naked people aren’t around!²). I have to think that this kid’s bad poetry or weird art is going to beat the pants off that of her contemporaries; when your Artistic Sulking Spot is someplace this cool and unique, it’s bound to show in the art it generates.

She’ll still be crushingly mortified by it in 15 years, though.

My main gist this month is also a look back, although not quite that far back. I used to be part of this small but very active and very interconnected community of bands, a few years ago, and I’ve been thinking about that experience lately.

This was precipitated by watching a documentary on, of all things, The Rainbow, in LA. If you’re not familiar, it’s a bar that has long been a hangout for the rock scene there, and not just the regular people who decided to start a band, but the big names with multiple worldwide tours and songs that were played at your high school dances and Wikipedia pages with “Controversies” sections. But what was kind of remarkable was that they had this hangout bar, and they all knew each other and went to each other’s shows and sat around together drinking beer and eating soup (I know) afterwards. And that’s what I miss. Well, not the soup, specifically. The band scene here never really had a soup culture.

But: always having somewhere to be every weekend, always showing up to support friends, singing along to their songs, knowing everyone in the room at least by sight, having friends who would reliably show up to your shows, having friends who might start a band with you if left unsupervised for an afternoon, having friends.

I do have friends, I mean! I love the friends I have now, today! But we don’t see each other so much, we don’t leave the house so much, we don’t have built-in ways to spend time or to meet new friends so much - and a lot of this is my own fault for having a kid³ or for living far away. I’m not at all blaming my friends for my decline in community presence! It’s on me, and on the ceaseless forward passage of time; other people are having kids and buying houses out in the sticks (where it might be more affordable) and growing out of a pastime that involves standing on your feet for several hours and being out late and having to find a date to practice that works for everyone else in the band. And there are no more practice spaces, either, so, I mean - I get it! It’s hard!

But I didn’t expect a bunch of hair band dudes hanging out with each other to make me emotional; I didn’t expect to get hit so hard with a wave of missing. So I’m trying to interrogate what it is that I miss specifically⁴  - is it the actual individual people, is it having a social life, is it the music and the spectacle and the enjoyment of being at a show, is it having a band chat and that third-place of practice, is it getting a chance to show off (to the members of the other bands on the bill, let’s be honest about the attendance level) while playing shows? Is it that one time a guy was coming out of the bathroom next to our practice space and crossed paths with me in the hallway and told me that the singer in that room - pointing at ours - was really good? Is it the time Cat burned down the practice space microwave, overcooking a freezer burrito?⁵ Is it covering each other’s songs? Is it having a good reason and excuse to do things, and not having to deal with a lot of infrastructure and contingencies in order to do them? It’s probably all of them, to some extent.

I’m whining and moaning as usual but I think this problem is really just me: time has continued to pass! I’m not 29 anymore; I’m not even 39. The things that people can reasonably do, or even want to do, change over the course of their lives. Not to say ooh you can’t go have fun anymore once you hit a certain age, but people tend to start moving away from some stuff and towards other stuff as their lives evolve, and if you’re friends with people in your same age group, your life tends to evolve in the same rough direction at the same time.

But it’s always sad to lose a community, and I think I talk about community a lot in here. I’m the kind of an extrovert who needs to be around people, to have people who know me and want to hang out with me too, to feel like I have a home among the people I’m with. Sometimes you know that a friendship is here for a good time and not for a long time, or if you left town or quit that job or stopped going to shows it would fade away pretty fast, and that’s normal - but there always has to be something else to take on that role. All your friendships can’t be that kind. Otherwise where are you? Alone, that’s where.

What am I reading

Appropriately to the fact that an eclipse is coming, I’m in the middle of Fevered Star, by Rebecca Roanhorse. It’s the sequel to the absolutely incredible Black Sun, and takes place right after the events of that book, which means I can’t say TOO much or I’ll spoil that one for you.

But it does center around an eclipse - a strange, lingering eclipse - so I have to wonder if I’ll accidentally wrap it up over the weekend, which would be funny. In the world where it is set, gods and magic have been forbidden for centuries, by a treaty that ended a catastrophic war. But now one, or maybe more, have come back or been brought back or been rebuilt, and the city of Tova and its surrounding areas are in chaos. Powerful families are trying to use this to their advantage, to break the carefully calibrated detente between them so that one can gain control of the city and primacy over the others; religious sects are gaining in prominence after being relegated to the shadows; external forces are hoping to sweep in as well.

So far, I think the first book was better, but it’s hard to tell with a series, and especially a fantasy series, because the first book has all the excitement and novelty of bringing you to a different reality and letting you learn about it, and the second book can’t really rely on that as much and has more heavy lifting to do. This one is interestingly very yearn-y - the first one was less so, although there was a really good and memorable sex scene in it (What! We’re all adults here!! Sometimes book characters have sex with each other!! If they’re going to do it, I’d hope it’s done well!). And in saying the first one was better, I’m not trying to imply that this one isn’t good - I’m invested, I want to find out what happens next, and what the explanation is for this and that, and what the payoff will be of something that got set up here.

I know some of you may be aware of some attacks on Roanhorse regarding the validity of her Native heritage. Some of these attacks have come from one particular well-known “Pretendian hunter,” whose name I won’t mention here in case she or her followers like searching for her name, and her involvement makes me really side-eye the whole venture of delegitimizing her: this is someone who wields the accusation of being a faker like a club against people she doesn’t like, and often those people are both Black and Indigenous, as Roanhorse is. So, while I can’t speak to whether her actual ancestral community claims her and why or why not, any claims from that one individual are automatically suspect to me.

Some links

I’m not going to make you wait for the best one - the famous deleted F1 article. This article was written, published by Road & Track, and then suddenly pulled⁶, but the Internet Archive has got our back. This one is very much for my Real Housewives of Formula 1 girlies, but it’s also for anyone who wants to read about the completely alien stratum of wealth that coheres around these events. Additionally, the author made a point that hadn’t occurred to me: these races are not loud, because the cars are built to be hyper-efficient; if it’s generating a bunch of noise, that’s energy that is being wasted on sound rather than fury, so to speak. Anyway. Enjoy! Behind F1’s Velvet Curtain

Not to say the rest of the links I have here are second-rate, of course! For instance, there’s this one, about Mona, a small island off Puerto Rico with a fascinating and terrible past, not to mention its present: An Arsenal of Mysteries: The Terrifying Allure of a Remote Caribbean Island

Or this one, about “Missed Connections” ads and their ilk, and people who got together from them, and whether there’s any future in that type of ad: “To the Train Lady with Dark Brown Hair…”: Four Stories of Extraordinary Couples Who Found Love Via Small Ads

Or perhaps you prefer a story about people scamming their way into living in a mansion? The Squatters of Beverly Hills

Ok, I’m going to stop with that little conceit now and just talk about the articles. Like this one. A killer whale living up to the name. Lone Orca Slays Great White in Less than Two Minutes and Feasts on Its Liver

Further in nature: Italy has not had “nature” the way a North American person might think about it, a place that is fully wild and not cultivated or constructed, in a solid couple thousand years. This makes sense in terms of history and human habitation in the peninsula and all that, but it is also - as a person who feels like there’s no wilderness around here, because it’s all penned up in parks and was full of farms and things 150 years ago - completely insane to think about. But now some signs of it are returning as farms die out in the mountains, and it’s a very mixed bag. A really fascinating read. Bears in the Villa

Is “hotel down the bottom of a mine” for you? It looks nice! It costs a lot! But it’s 1400 feet below ground, and I feel like that’s a bit of a dealbreaker for some people. Also, what do you do there? Just sit in your room and think about how you’re at the bottom of a mine? See the World’s Deepest Hotel - Where Getting There is Half the Adventure

My first reaction, reading this story, was fury at the police who were happy to play on stereotypes and let this family believe something that was totally false, and put in zero effort. But it’s also, of course, a sad story, and, at its heart, a hopeful one too. I Always Believed My Funny, Kind Father Was Killed By a Murderous Teenage Gang. Three Decades On, I Discovered the Truth

A powerful critique of writing as rulebook-following - of the obsession with mechanics and worldbuilding and “explaining the magic system.” I worry about this sometimes; have I done too much of it in my own work? Maybe. When I’m writing, I can imagine people pointing to this and that and accusing it of being internally inconsistent, of the math not adding up, of “how does this work this way, if that works that way?” It’s freeing, I suppose, to remember that if nobody reads it, nobody will do that to it. The Lone and Level Sands

I have such mixed feelings about this article. These two girls (and their mother, who got this ball rolling) are 100% scammers and liars and faked having Inuit heritage to get scholarships, which should have gone to other students. But, as I mentioned earlier when talking about the book I’m reading, “pretendian hunting” is creepy, often a tool for harassment of people the instigator doesn’t like, also often racist, and built on the basis of blood quantum, which is in itself racist and colonialist. So while these specific people were really faking it and should experience consequences for that, it’s important to be careful to not get too far into whether this person or that is really Native or Native enough, and I’m not sure if this author has that nuance or not. The Great Pretenders: How Two Faux-Inuit Sisters Cashed In on a Life of Deception

Further in, I guess, deception: spy business! Logistics! Lie math! How Russian Spies Get Flipped or Expelled, As Told By a Spycatcher

Speaking of Russian spies. I hadn’t followed any part of this until reading this article, but apparently one of the C-level execs for this German online banking company was recruited by Russia for espionage reasons? Jan Marsalek an Agent for Russia? The Double Life of the Former Wirecard Executive 

Last issue, I shared a story about a scam artist so compelling, he’s not allowed to speak to anyone but his lawyer and his stepmother. This is a behind-the-scenes, as it were, of how that story was reported, and what it takes to write about prisons, especially very high security ones. How Alan Prendergast Reported on “America’s Loneliest Prisoner” and Others Like Him

Boat disasters part 1: 10 years ago, a passenger ferry in the Baltic sea sank, and this is a harrowing account of people trying to escape it in its last moments. Very very compelling. A Sea Story

Boat disasters part 2: 109 years ago, a passenger steamer was hired to carry a company’s workers to a picnic but rolled over while still at the dock. The question in the title seems obvious: the victims of this disaster were everyday workers, often immigrants, not well-off, and this was not a luxury liner but the 1915 equivalent of a rented bus taking them to their company outing. Still, it’s appalling how obvious it was that this ship was in very risky shape well before this disaster occurred. The Eastland Disaster Killed More Passengers Than the Titanic and the Lusitania. Why Has It Been Forgotten?

PANTS BREAK! Why Are Pants So Big (Again)?

Imagine getting a rejection… from Toni Morrison. There Is No Point in My Being Other Than Honest With You: On Toni Morrison’s Rejection Letters

Want to read something that will really make your blood boil? This article explains that discrimination in sentencing is not just rampant against Native Americans, but mandated by law. You know I think the whole prison-industrial complex should be dismantled, but if you have to start with one place, how about here. Unequal Before the Law

Another one for the anger file. So, we know that it’s getting hotter; in some areas, that means it’s getting dangerously hot, especially for people who are exerting themselves outdoors. This article looks at two people who died as a result of overheating, one a farm worker, and one a high school football player. Guess which one sparked a new law to protect other people like him? You already know. As Heat Becomes a National Threat, Who Will Be Protected? 

If you’re not sure about prison abolition and think reforms are the way instead, I encourage you to read this, not just for the horrors of what medical care is like in prisons, but also for the attitude of people in power towards prisons and the people locked up in them. They don’t want to “reform.” This is working as intended. “Everyone Will Die in Prison”: How Louisiana’s Plan to Lock People Up Longer Imperils Its Sickest Inmates

Both of these jobs are very cool, but one has the other beat hollow. The Neuroscientist Formerly Known as Prince's Audio Engineer 

I assume their houses foundered under bizarre circumstances that could only be the result of a curse, surely? Truly awful colonialist behavior! The Victorian Ladies Who Smuggled a Mummy Case out of Egypt

Another link, another pair of olden tymes ladies who had an Experience abroad!⁷ These, however, didn’t steal a corpse - they saw(??) Marie Antoinette(???) and her court while visiting Versailles. And everyone was more or less cool with this claim! The Respected Oxford Professors Who Say They Time-Travelled

I saw this link in the good buddy Davey’s newsletter, Self Help Art Publishing Empire, and I must now share it with those of you who don’t already subscribe to his (although you should start). Can you find the skin you used for your Winamp? I know I had one that was green and silver with a lot of rounded shapes - very it’s the year 2000 and we expect every cyberpunk novel to come true within months - and I MIGHT have found it in here? Can’t be sure. It’s been a long time. Winamp Skins Museum 

GOOD. Also, one of these is not so far from my folks’ house and I’ve been working on them to come around in unqualified support of it. Canada’s First Nations are Building the Densest Neighborhoods in the Country by Reclaiming Their Ancestral Lands and Defying NIMBYs

This is an incredible scam, and the guy only screwed it up by trying to go too big: he could have stayed in the hotel and paid rent and gotten away with that legally for an incredibly cheap rate, but he tried to loophole his way into owning the whole hotel, and that wound up being his undoing. Also the “not paying rent ever” thing was kind of a problem. The Hotel Guest Who Wouldn’t Leave

First of all, justice for Blowhole, who did nothing wrong, even if he did chew through the brake lines! I am fully in agreement with the guy named Sass on this. But second of all, this is just delightfully written, and if you aren’t already aware of this pup (or a full blown apologist for him), you’ll have that rectified in a very diverting way. Blowhole the Sled Dog Became a Social Media Star - But Was He a Criminal First?

There’s more to this than just a spicy ramen flavor hitting it big! This company weathered several scandals, and the article uses it as a jumping-off point to discuss the hereditary leadership of companies in Korea. But also, now I’m hungry for ramen (perhaps not scream-and-die spicy, though). How Some Very Spicy Noodles Saved the Company that Pioneered Korean Ramen

This is interesting in and of itself, but what this rivalry (that I had never heard of) reminds me of is a conversation back when Twitter was fun, which was about something like what public figure does your mom hate/have a feud with (also, if your mom has it out for someone, tell me immediately, this kind of dirt is the best kind), and someone’s grandmother apparently hated Amelia Earhart! So I was thinking, was the grandma perhaps Team Mabel Boll? When Amelia Earhart and the “Queen of Diamonds” Raced to Become the First Woman to Fly Across the Atlantic

Remember when metal monoliths (I know, I know, that’s not a thing, the -lith suffix means stone, I know) were appearing in the middle of nowhere a few years ago? They’re back, baby!! “A Perfect Monolith” Appears in Wales

I read this and tried to think about my “bad mug,” and there are definitely some that I never use (because they’re “Matt’s” in some way, although he has never forbidden me from using them or anything) and I think I have two: one is a tall, narrow Kahlua-branded mug, which I never use because it’s too big to be normal-sized but too small to be a “big mug,” and one that my brother gave us with some Trump joke on it. I’m not trying to drink out of a mug with his dumb face on it, and also the joke is pretty stupid and trivializes the very real and serious issues his presidency exacerbated. It’s Time to Embrace the “Bad Mug” - Even If That Means Never Using It

You will gasp at some of these dresses. The construction!! Why Is Jacques Griffe Not As Famous As Dior?

Okay, one more, and this is not in the Death Block, but I encourage you to give it a look: this is a magazine I’m going to submit to once a story I’ve got out there as part of a no-simultaneous-submissions call gets rejected (which it will). It’s an all-LGBTQ+, all SFF magazine⁹, put out by a press of the same name, and I loved just about every fiction piece in it (didn’t read the poetry section but I imagine it’s great too?). It’s probably way out of my league, but so what, right? They aren’t going to show up at my house and tell me I’m stupid¹⁰. Here’s the latest issue: Prismatica Magazine

Tunes I’ve been listening to lately

I hate that I’m at the age where before I post something about a musician I used to listen to as a teen, I have to look them up first to make sure they haven’t said some bullshit. So far, Holly McNarland looks like she’s still good - a relief. Also, a friend was in the same Young Drivers class as her (friend was a teen, McNarland was an adult and super pregnant if I recall the story).

Another win for The Algorithm - it actually gets it wrong (or is unmemorable in either direction) much more than it gets it right, but Shilpa Ray was dropped into a playlist for me and I liked what I heard enough to listen to the rest of

The other day, I had to work upstairs, which means I was trying, intermittently, to use my little external cd drive. It kept giving out on me during this song, so I wound up hearing it at least 3 or 4 times. So: here it is.

This month’s top 5: Reasons Hap has told me I’m a bad mother lately

1. I told him to stop watching tv and get dressed

2. I didn’t wake him up on the rare occasion that he slept in past 6am

3. I told him not to fool around while brushing his teeth

4. I “made” him hit me

5. I told him to get back over here and GET DRESSED, I’m not joking around, we’re going to be late

The funny thing is I truly am a bad parent, but not for these reasons!

I’m tired, I have the beginnings of a headache, and more than anything else I’m cold (more on this saga next issue), and I know I never work on these over the weekends, so I don’t have a pithy last word to share here - I’m just going to get it out before I call it a night and hope some of you are bored enough sometime over the weekend to read it. (obviously, that did not happen, as it is now Saturday and I’m about to hit send)

_{1 hi, friend!!}

_{2 neither of these places is actually unknown and unheard-of and unvisited, of course, but when I was 16 I sure thought I had discovered them, in the way of 16-year-olds everywhere}

_{3 indeed, tomorrow (as of the moment of this writing), Matt’s band has a show, which I won’t be going to because then who would be minding the store?}

_{4 and I’m making it your problem!!}

_{5 the fire department came}

_{6 why??? a mystery! a scandal? no one knows! (someone knows. but they’re not telling)}

_{7 so… broads abroad? sorry (not really)}

_{8 they’re not! and my being dead will not change this!}

_{9 I’m fully aware that this is very much catnip for at least one of you, I did have you specifically in mind with this}

_{10 probably!! although that would make for an interesting switch from the usual rejection form letters, I guess}