#63: This harbor is practically a teapot

Actual updates

I’m giving you this line direct and unedited from my notes:

what is this monarchy ass shit??

There are a lot of things going on that I’m very upset about, but one key one is that this country fought a whole war and established themselves as a country on the specific basis of “We don’t have kings.” So I know I’m not alone in being very taken aback by the way a president is declaring himself a king (and his chief lackey is apparently declaring himself CEO of the government, telling all the civil servants he hasn’t summarily fired that they report to him now, which is also not how a country operates). But yeah, the king stuff has real implications and none of them are good.

That does make it kind of sickly funny that I’m trying to move to a place that literally does have a real king - well, it has Charles¹. So, you know, technically.

I’m thinking about it more again lately; I’ve launched myself into the work again, shaking off the heavy damp blanket of depression and uncertainty that’s kept me from doing it for, oh, a year, maybe more, I don’t know when the last time I touched anything related to the move was. I don’t mean I’ve simply Stopped Being Depressed or anything like that, don’t be ridiculous, but I’m doing the thing anyway. I kind of got the message that I had better get moving on it, so I’m moving. I talked to two movers today, one in person, and I have concrete ideas about how it’s going to go.

How it’s going to go is: expensively! I’ve never (personally) used professional movers before, because all my moves have been doable in a rented van or truck, and when we moved into this house, we had the twin blessings of Matt working at a warehouse and being able to borrow the truck from work for a day over the weekend, and having closed on the house before our apartment lease ended, so we brought small things over gradually. Also, we were moving from a one-bedroom apartment, so we didn’t really have that much stuff to bring! (If you’re wondering about when I moved to the US in the first place, the answer is: by plane, with a big duffel bag and 3 or 4 boxes as checked luggage; extra-baggage fees were what I paid instead of movers’ fees.)

I feel like I’ll need to take time off to accomplish all this. There’s SO much. Movers, someone to manage our house once we are renting it, the ol’ driver’s license, triple checking all the immigration documents, making sure a school is ready to take Hap when we get there, replacing any busted old furniture we aren’t bringing with us, getting a job when we get there - I’m seesawing between thinking “yes! I can actually DO THIS! It’ll be tough but I can²” and “can somebody else just mecha pilot me around for awhile while I dissociate³” (I’m fine!!!). Honestly if I do accomplish this some day I need to take a day off to just melt into the floor and slowly reconstitute myself. Although there IS a bog nearby our destination house… so maybe I could just hold off until I get there, and then melt into that. Aspiration: bog body. Dress for the job you want.

Furthermore. Furthermore!! There’s a guy right now in our basement fixing one of the two things down there that’s on the blink⁴: our dryer gave up on drying the clothes, and we thought it was that we needed to clean out the vent hose, but after the first vent hose cleaning shop told us we actually needed a whole different kind of hose and replacing it would be $950, we started calling around, and - okay. You know how there’s an appliance repair shop in your town or neighborhood that you’re not really sure how it stays in business and it looks like it’s been there since 1952? It’s run by an old man, and if you call that guy, in my experience from two different appliance problems, he will not be able to service that model (if it’s modern and full of computers), but he WILL be able to give you a helpful troubleshooting tip. In this case, he’ll note that if you unhook the vent tube and run the dryer (this is safe to do in a very limited capacity, like for one load of clothes), if the clothes get dry, your problem is the vent and it needs to be cleaned. If they still don’t get dry, your problem is the dryer. Well, guess what. They didn’t. So arcane rituals are going on down in my basement right now and I hope they work out. At least, surely by the time I hit “send” on this thing they’ll have worked out! Surely!⁵

Sometimes I think I’m too stupid to own a house and I should never have bought one.

I mean, I’m lucky in general; I was at an age and a level of job stability at an auspicious time so that I could buy a house - prices were low for a moment and we were able to move on it - and of course all the other types of privilege we have working in the background to enable us to get the jobs we had at the time, save up some money, not have to worry that we’d need that money for something else vital and therefore not be able to spend it towards a house. But I’ve made so many mistakes AS a homeowner; I’ve called the wrong people to fix this and that, I’ve forgotten who deals with this and that, I’ve straight up forgotten to DO this and that, and I don’t take care of the place as well as it deserves. I had this incredible good fortune and I squander it every day. Embarrassing.

Will this spur me to get my shit together? Time will tell (no).

What am I reading

I can safely assume that the book I’m about halfway through will still be the book I’m reading when I hit “publish” on this issue; it’s densely packed for north of 500 pages (the page margins are pushed out to keep it from being even longer, too), and as usual I have no time to catch up. So: Oil!, by Upton Sinclair. Yes, the The Jungle guy. Yes, also, this is the book that There Will Be Blood was based on.

I haven’t seen the movie in donkey’s years so I can’t say with certainty, but I’m fairly sure the book and movie differ fairly significantly, other than being about the same main characters and about the California oil rush of the early 20th century. It was Matt’s book, and he informs me that furthermore the milkshake line is not present in it, more’s the pity.

And, alright, it is written in the style of its time - the sentences are florid and lengthy, man never misses a chance to hyphenate a word that we now compound, and I’m waiting for something super racist to jump out, but man can he ever pull you into action. The book opens with a description of what can only be called “motoring” (it’s not “driving” when it’s 1912) and those long rolling sentences are perfect for evoking the feeling of chugging up and over hills in a car of the era, zooming along at what would be high speeds then and maybe major-thoroughfare speed limits now. Sinclair is by god not going to let you get out of this book with an image unimagined. Also there’s a nonzero amount of sex.

I don’t think California’s oil is oil sands, like Alberta’s, but in this book there are descriptions of drilling down to the “oil sand” to reach the oil; what I’ve looked up online backs me up, but maybe the terminology was different back then. But you know how I feel about a book that sends me to a Wikipedia wormhole (it’s a plus!), so even if it’s incorrect, it’s interesting!

To be fair, there’s a certain amount that just washes over me - the specifics of the financial instruments and ways of holding stock that got invented around then to help the rich stay rich and not have to answer to anyone, or the literal mechanics of how oil wells work. It’s enough to know that it’s there without having to know how it works.

Most of all, though, I want to see how he fills the rest of this big fat book⁶.

Some links

This landing has happened! It worked! This nice-sounding man’s dream has come true! I love space! Sunday’s Moon Landing Could Fulfill a Texas Tech Professor’s Dream - Or End in a Nightmare

Fake books! These Books Are Absolutely Unreadable. That’s the Point

I love a nerd race!! (I also love an article that makes it clear that these colonial researchers flat-out stole artifacts from their country of origin and didn’t think twice about it) The Mystery of the World’s Oldest Writing System Remained Unsolved Until Four Competitive Scholars Raced to Decipher It

The title makes it sound like it’s going to be conspiracy shit but it’s not, this is about how bird flu works and spreads and what it’s been up to lately (nothing good!!). The Unnatural History of Bird Flu

Similarly, this one risks going into hysteria territory since it’s about unhoused people in San Francisco, where they’ve made a religion out of blaming people on the streets for every problem. But the person being profiled doesn’t appear to subscribe to that attitude; the “extraordinary” methods referred to in the title are things like “treating the people she works with like humans” and “helping them get their needs met instead of throwing their belongings in the trash and saying ‘move along’.” Her Job Is to Remove Homeless People from SF’s Parks. Her Methods Are Extraordinary

I have no hope of Gavin Newsom doing anything as good as this writer hopes, but this is an important read by someone personally sentenced to death. I’m One of 600 People on CA’s Death Row. Newsom Must End Death Penalty

Royals from defunct lines love making a big deal about their royalness instead of just being quietly wealthy and minding their own business, but this one kind of went the extra mile. The Fugitive Prince

No, yeah, the headline pretty much says it all. Stop Whatever You’re Doing and Look at This Horrifying Fork

This is a link to the Atlantic, so it does risk being kind of up itself, but the gist here isn’t wrong: attention is now a major currency, and the same way capitalism alienates the worker from their labor, the attention economy alienates the … participant(?) from their attention. I don’t enjoy it! You’re Being Alienated from Your Own Attention

First of all, “Fergal” is such a terrific name. Second of all, as a big depresso, this has a certain degree of the ring of truth. Obviously everyone’s circumstances are different and different things will work, but I’d say it’s worth a read. Fergal Keane on PTSD, Depression, and the Secret to Happiness

Hat fraud! Also, you get to think about Margaret Hamilton, which is something you should probably do more⁷. Sale of Wicked Witch’s Hat from “Wizard of Oz” Sparks Fraud Lawsuit

This is why one of my top safety tips is “don’t get caught in Herculaneum during the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE. Follow me for more useful tips!! How a Volcanic Eruption Turned a Human Brain Into Glass

The gist of this article appears to be “we’re doing irony again lads!! (negative)” I’m not sure I agree that the exhausted, mirthless “lol” appended to everything means we’re scared to show a sincere emotion; I was there when irony was declared dead after 9/11 and I don’t think the current moment is the same as either the period before or after that. It’s a valid line of inquiry - I just don’t think I arrive at the same end point as the author does. The End of Seriousness

But what about food? Is food unserious now? I haven’t been to a restaurant in ages, other than one special occasion when we went to a sort of chain barn of Italian food⁸ but they aren’t going to be changing their menu to adhere to a trend. So this article is what I have to go on. Everything Sucks. At Least There Are Jalapeño Poppers

Big Religion discomfits me, evangelical Christianity moreso than most, and I don’t know if this is the heartwarming story it thinks it is, entirely - but if you’d like to see one man’s journey, via his love for his son, to welcoming gay people at his megachurch, here you have it. You also have periods between the letters of LGBTQ, which grated on me more than it honestly should have. My Father Was a Conservative Evangelical Pastor. Then I Came Out

Climate change is hell and everything but this essay makes the correct point that even when you know something (e.g., flamingos showing up in your non-tropical backyard) is a portent of doom, it’s sometimes hard to be as appalled and horrified as you should be because it’s beautiful. When Flamingos Came to the Chesapeake

Some of this is terrific and true and sounds like a lot of fun, but some of it sounds intensely tone-deaf and entitled. Ask a cab driver to take you to their mom’s house so she’ll wind up cooking you a meal? Crash a wedding?? He says no one has ever objected in his many years of doing these things but I have to assume they were just being too polite to tell him to mind his business, or too shocked at how he thought it was fine to just walk into other people’s lives to object. Also, I can guarantee him that no one who is or is read as a woman, or people in various marginalized identities, are going to sign up to be taken to a mystery location by someone they just met. 50 Years of Travel Tips

This is partly about raw milk fans, partly about tradwives (that Venn diagram approaches a circle), and partly about the popularity graph of faux milks. I have milk opinions, I spent a lot of time at my grandma’s dairy farm growing up (and the guy who said “fewer people would be into raw milk if they had ever been within 10 feet of a cow” is correct). Anyway, I think the article should have picked one focus, since I felt like I didn’t quite get enough depth on any of the three topics, but who asked me? Got Weird? Milk Is Headed for Its Strangest Year Yet

This one might feel like a downer - it’s about community suicide prevention, particularly queer and trans communities - but I feel it’s hopeful and useful. As things get worse, we need to make sure everyone stays with us, since we need all of us. These are good tips as to how to help your friends and communities when the situation arises. And, not for nothing, as someone who has benefitted from this type of intervention in the past, thinking about how to help someone else always redirects me away from myself (which is useful in the moment, too). We Must Live For Each Other

Bird feud! BIRD FEUD!! 3 Parrots, 1 Shared Wall, 2 Ruptured Lives

Art feud! ART FEUD!! Garage Sale Portrait is Not a Van Gogh Original, Museum Says

Tunes I’ve been listening to lately

HEY HERE’S A SONG THAT’S TIMELY EVEN THOUGH IT’S 7 YEARS OLD, AT WHICH TIME IT WAS ALSO TIMELY

I hate that I always have to check now to find out if any famous woman of a certain age (the age is “broadly Gen-X”) has TERFishness problems, but I think Dar Williams is in the clear? Anyway, an old high school chum made all the friends a tape that had a lot of Dar Williams on it, which I relistened to recently; this song might be the most firmly lodged in my head.

Another tape, another song; this tape didn’t have a track list (side note: why?? writing out the track list and creating a cover were two of the big joys of making tapes! come on, older sister of my internet friend who made this tape!!) so it took until today for me to find out who this song was even by.

This month’s top 5: little rules for myself

Someone online asked people to post 5 rules for themselves, and I like that; I definitely live by little personal rule sets. I have to amend what I posted originally, though, I’ve thought of some better ones. Also, these are rules for me but I occasionally wish they were rules for other people too.

1. The old saw: Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without. Wasting anything (which includes throwing it out before you’ve wrung every scrap of utility from it) is one of my highest crimes.

2. Don’t be a baby: don’t whine, don’t make your problem someone else’s problem, don’t fuss about something that you can actually just put up with and get on with (and here I mean like a headache, not like bad things happening to people who are not you, obviously).

3. Guilty pleasures don’t exist: ok, there are definitely some things you should feel guilt about taking pleasure in - if it harms someone else, please be wracked - but if you like a mass market pop song or a tv show that doesn’t challenge you or a movie that got panned, who cares! You’re allowed to like it without having to perform guilt, even to yourself, about it!

4. Time is fake: did we or did we not all live through 2020? Time is definitely fake. A lot of things are fake! “Productivity” is fake. Money is fake (although we all definitely still NEED it to exchange for goods and services). Most of what most of us do for a living is fake! And by this I mean, it only exists because someone made it up. It is the way that it is because someone decided it should be that way. It doesn’t automatically deserve respect or a place of primacy in your thoughts.

5. Other people do notice, actually, but it doesn’t matter: okay, this one might be controversial. You know when you’re having some kind of anxiety over how you’ll be Perceived, or if your new haircut looks bad, or whatever, and your friend or your mom or your inspirational poster says don’t worry, no one will actually notice? No one’s paying attention? I guess that’s kind of true, but also it’s not. You’ve noticed other people when they’re looking or acting weird, right? Of course you have. So have I. But the thing is this: it doesn’t matter. So what if some stranger doesn’t like your hat? Their opinion is irrelevant!

Come to think of it, 80% of these rules could be distilled down to “it doesn’t matter!” I think that’s worth considering, honestly - your concerns may be founded, your suspicions may be correct, but it doesn’t matter. You can be right and still not eat yourself up about it.

Okay! Time to go back to scrolling through the stories of people being disappeared for having wrong opinions and locked up in ICE prisons for doing tourism wrong and threatened with jail for not buying a luxury car! I feel so good all the time, my stress levels are very normal!

_{1 i’m going to laugh so hard the first time i see money with his goofy face on it}

_{2 this thought surfaces on days when i’ve called, emailed, filled out forms for, or heard back from a bunch of people and i’m feeling very accomplished and flush with information}

_{3 this thought, by contrast, is for when i think about what is left to do, and also just a lot of the time unrelatedly}

_{4 the other thing is that our boiler is still leaking water and all the attempts to fix it have come to naught. but at least it still heats the house}

_{5 yes, at last, thank god}

_{6 the answer appears to be “with communism”}

_{7 she got badly burned on the wizard of oz! she went on mr rogers to remind kids she was not actually evil and it was just a costume! she might have been gay?}

_{8 which nonetheless has a french name??}