#69: Nice

Actual Updates

I told you last time that I had another road test coming up, right? Well: it went terribly, and I passed.

I was sure I was going to fail again. I was sure of it. Apart from doing a moderately lousy job of demonstrating my skills, and being tested on something we didn’t actually cover in lessons (parallel parking between two cars, rather than just behind one), I was practically in a state of nervous collapse when I got there: I was almost late thanks to the vagaries of the MBTA¹ , I forgot to wear closed-toe shoes and Matt had to bring me some, I found out about the Air Canada strike that was hanging over my parents’ ability to come meet us in Montreal on the way over, and then when I got there and was waiting for my turn, I was listening to a girl who had just finished her test and presumably failed, crying about how unfair the examiner was and how she had lied and so on. So I was in a terrible mental state, very much not expecting to do well, and indeed I don’t think I covered myself in glory. I did a really average parallel parking job - although again, between two cars is harder! - and asked a question that I shouldn’t have, got told to drive faster, and couldn’t figure out that the parking brake was still set when I tried to start driving. But she still passed me!

Honestly, I think I should have passed the previous time, and not this time, but either way I would be a licensed driver by now, so I guess I’d be in the same spot by this point regardless.

And what is that spot? That spot is: you have to drive on the highway now. I know for the more longtime drivers among you the highway is easy mode. You just point the car in a direction, put your foot on the gas, and go. In town is the hard part because there’s intersections and parking and people darting out from between cars and all sorts of different situations arising. But here’s the thing. Those situations are arising when you’re going pretty slowly. There’s time to react. You’re looking for them, in fact. Mistakes aren’t amplified the way they are at freeway speeds. I’ve gone on the highway twice, once during lessons (in the rain! behind a big truck!!) and once the day after getting my license, and I came off it shaking both times. Alive, though, and un-crashed! But that’s not enough - I’ve remained alive and relatively un-crashed my entire life so far and I can’t say it’s exclusively gone well.

But I’ve got a big highway drive coming up (no, not that one) so I have to get comfortable fast. Like, immediately.

Why? Because we’re going - will have gone, by the time this email goes out - up to Montreal, where my parents will meet us² , for a few days, and I think I’m driving the whole way. At least, I’m driving the part where we cross the border and then are in Canada, due to my… innate Canadian understanding of all roads and byways in the True North Strong and Free, I guess. Never mind that this is Quebec, which, I mean, ask them how they feel about the whole Canada thing. BUT ANYWAY. The whole reason I got the license was to drive with it. The whole reason I got the license was to drive with it on highways, to be specific, on long hauls across the country, and then when we get there, to take my friends up to Whistler when they visit if they’re that sort of friends, and not really to tool around the city in - there’s public transit in cities! You can walk places! That’s not where you need a car! So this is the very epitome of a Me Problem, and I know it’ll get better with a little time and practice, which I’m about to get in spades. But that doesn’t mean the practice is going to feel easy and comfortable!

So it happened! We went to Montreal and came back and survived the whole trip. I drove (somewhat less than) my fair share of the way, and the first night of it was, well, at night, and raining a bit, and I did not do my best work. But we were fine, reached my mother-in-law’s, I stayed awake most of the night reliving the worst part, and then in the morning we woke up and I took the wheel again. I got us over the border - crossing into Canada was not a big deal, but I didn’t expect it to be one - and then handed over the reins a short piece after that.

I don’t know that it was the world’s most successful vacation. Seeing my parents was great; seeing some old haunts was great too. I got to have a Montreal bagel, which basically gets you roundly disparaged down here. I may, at the age of 43, be ready to make a decision between Fairmount and St-Viateur (slight edge to… St-Viateur, and if you’re not sure why I’m making a big deal about this, they’ve been in competition for decades). I broke a single-day steps record, according to my phone, because I have internalized what I learned as a kid which is that a vacation means walking. But I also made some bad mistakes around meals and food in general - I was unprepared, I think, and I was thinking we could just do what we used to do and wander around and find a good place to eat, but that isn’t realistic when two members of your party have some dietary restrictions (and those restrictions are often in conflict, in the sense that a place that caters to one will be unlikely to be good for the other). But, speaking of eating, is there some kind of law in Montreal that every waiter has to be the world’s most charming person? I feel like I left there with three new best friends. So, on the whole, it came out about even.

On the way back, we had to cross the border again, and this was the crossing I was nervous about. Not nervous, maybe, exactly, but - okay, look. Growing up, crossing the border was a normal thing to do, we had a ramshackle little cabin down by Mt. Baker and we would go down there to ski or hike or try, futilely, to keep the cabin from deteriorating further (it is now nearly entirely in the hands of the forest after many years of neglect). Other people would go down to shop at a mall in a town not too far over the line, or go to Seattle, fill up their car with cheaper gas, or whatever they liked to do; the greatest risk at the border crossing (assuming you weren’t doing actual crimes, I guess) was having to wait in a long line. No one ever gave you an actual hard time. Where are you going, where are you from, how long will you be there, how long did you stay. What are you bringing back³ . On the way up, that’s what we were asked.

On the way down, they asked Matt about his tattoos.

This is a question I’ve never seen a border guard ask. It’s no mystery why, though, given what we’ve been seeing with folks rounded up and shipped away based on nothing but a unilateral decision that their tattoos signified something sinister.

Now, ultimately it all amounted to nothing with us - the guy asked about the US Air Guitar logo tattoo in particular, and we both talked about that for a bit and he appeared charmed, and off we went, but I am certain that this relaxed attitude about it was due to our ethnicity; had Matt been Latino, I assume the conversation would have gone differently. It wasn’t an unpleasant experience, particularly, but it was a strange one and an unusual one, and I’m in no hurry to cross the border again until we’re planning to stay on the opposite side of it.

What am I reading

I’m reading this biography of Shane MacGowan that is written by his wife, as a series of interviews with him, A Drink With Shane MacGowan, and this is… a ride.

In one sense, it’s a ride because his life is one - living half-wild on an uncle’s farm in Ireland in his childhood, being given alcohol and smokes and so on as a tiny tot, jumping both-footed into drugs as a teen, getting sent to a psych ward at one point, fights, arrests, sex, offhandedly mentioning the seed of an idea that grew into The Pogues, and I’m not quite 100 pages in.

But it’s also nuts because of the writing. Man, this lady has never met an adverb she didn’t want to kiss on the lips. Every description of anything that happens during the course of the interview has an adverb slapped onto the end of the sentence. She isn’t a born interviewer, either, and she patronizes him constantly. Interestingly enough, in the introduction she explains that she had initially been writing the book with just his answers to her questions, so it would read like an autobiography, him telling stories about his life, and it just wasn’t quite right until she put her questions back in. I am not sure about that.

Does he say some retrograde or objectionable things? Yeah, of course he does, and apparently he doesn’t take baths (they spend enough time talking about this for me to assume they don’t mean he just showered instead, I think it means he was walking around stinking all the time). I’m not sure I would find it a pleasant experience to be stuck in an elevator with him⁸ . But he’s got stories. He’s got yarns on yarns. You would never be bored with him around, although you might be scandalized or pissed off.

As to whether I recommend the book, it’s hard to say - the writing is pretty annoying, but his life was so interesting that it might be worth it anyway? Or just go put some Pogues albums on, I guess.

Some links

Please read these interviews with men who had been deported to CECOT and have now been released (albeit back to their country of origin, so that’s still being deported). Now That They’re Free

Surprising no one, Rome’s efforts to expand their subway system involve a LOT of archeological excavations. Homes of “Working Class Romans” Discovered During Rome Metro Dig

Hey, this is really neat. It’s more about the experiences of doing it than the logistics of literally how, but it’s still pretty interesting stuff. I’m not sure I’d want to do it, honestly! I might want to read his book about it, though⁷ . I’m the First Person to Travel to Every Country in the World Without Ever Getting on a Plane - Here’s How I Did It

No points for guessing the answer to “why,” but first of all, “glacial lake outbursts” is a wild as hell name for a hydrological phenomenon, and second of all, the lake is called Suicide Basin. We’re all being very normal about naming things I see!! Why Glacial Lake Outbursts Like the One in Alaska May Happen More Often

The metaphor that the brain is like a computer, or even the slightly more reasonable a computer is like a brain, is incorrect. On every level. Brains are not just wetter, more complex computers. They operate totally differently, the way they interact with knowledge is different, the ways in which they respond to stimuli or events are different. And this isn’t just “reassess your fundamental metaphors,” this is a metaphor that underlies a lot of seemingly unrelated stuff. For instance, what a computer does can’t be called “intelligence” at all by this rubric, even if it’s doing something very smart or very difficult - it’s a whole other behavior than what a brain would do, even to get from the same point A to the same point B. I thought this was a really, really important essay. Your Brain Does Not Process Information and It Is Not a Computer

As I write this, my own kid is riding his bike around the neighborhood seeing if his friend is free to hang out. Hot tip to parents: if you get a decent walkie-talkie set, your kid can keep in touch with you from a couple blocks away without having to require a cell phone. What Kids Told Us About How to Get Them Off Their Phones

A grim look at how climate change is already wallopping Mauritius (a small island in the Indian Ocean, to the east of Madagascar, if you’re not familiar). The title is correct: this is the future of much more of the world, in minuscule. The Future of Climate Change is on Mauritius

This is so NEAT. The Curious Tale of Bhutan’s Playable Record Postage Stamps

Ok, this is a story about a former Olympic snowboarder’s journey to being a murderous drug lord and it’s compelling reading BUT you can really tell it’s written by a Toronto outlet because at one point they mention him moving from the suburbs to “Vancouver’s ritzy Westwood Plateau neighborhood.” I have never heard of this neighborhood in my life, and I’ve lived and gone to school in or very close to some fairly well-off parts of town. And it turns out the reason I haven’t heard of this neighborhood is because it isn’t in Vancouver at all - it’s in a suburb (albeit a different one than he lived in at first). Drug kingpins are bad, but Toronto must be stopped. Becoming El Jefe

Long, intricate, in-depth, and clearly full of love for its subject from a person who has the chops to know whereof they speak (and to casually disparage the font too because they know what does and doesn’t make a “good” font, although I love this one despite its alleged faults and they clearly do too). Also full of beautiful photos. You know this font, it’s on every institutional sign, label, nameplate and dial from a certain era, although it’s apparently much older. I loved this piece. Go have a look. The Hardest Working Font in Manhattan

First of all, I cannot stress enough how stupid the cola wars were. But I had no idea they had gotten this stupid: getting both colas taken to space to be taste-tested in an ill-advised publicity stunt (why ill-advised? consider: carbonation). Also, there’s a moment in this article where your blood will run cold. The First Soda in Space: When NASA Got Caught Up in the Cola Wars

It all started with a mysterious delivery of fries to someone’s house. That’s all I’m giving you, you’ll have to go read the rest. The Great French Fry Mystery

It’s one of the most horrifyingly unfair things in our alleged justice system that you can be charged with murder and locked up for simply being present when someone else kills someone else. A Friend’s Death to Mourn, and to Serve Time For

Environmentally, the very idea of these diamond mines gives me the vapours, and the header image does little to disabuse me of that notion. But the description of how things work (or don’t!) in this extreme climate is pretty fascinating. Whiteouts, Ice Roads, and Wolverines: What Working at a Diamond Mine in the Far North Is Like

Several songs describe the killing of a livestock inspector during the building of the Mississippi Levee by the man who ran one of the labor camps, but the facts of the matter varied from one song to the next. Here, the true story is untangled from the lyrical threads. Who Killed the Mercy Man

No but stick with me here. Worms are a weird business, so of course everyone in it is a total character, and - like everything, as we’re having brought home to us over and over again - it is linked to so many other forces and processes in the world. The Worm Hunters of Southern Ontario

Oh, this is beautiful. Love, and death, and what it means to be with someone, and what it means to be without them. Lottery Tickets

Tunes I’ve been listening to lately

Porchfest is coming up edition! This first one is by - you know Bubbles, from Trailer Park Boys? Well, he’s got a real band, called Bubbles and the Shitrockers, and this is one of their songs. It’s been in my head for a week, which is handy considering we’re covering it, although somewhat less handy considering I’m about to see my parents and kid, and neither of them should be around to hear me bawl out “I LIKE LIQUOR AND WHOOOOORES, LIQUOR AND WHORES”

Also doing this song, although it’s not as easy, so we might not be doing it well. I love what a mean, bitchy, petty little song this is (about stealing someone’s girlfriend to get back at them).

It blows my MIND that this song is from 1995 and not, like, last week. Oh, this is just a song that exists, I’m not singing it at Porchfest.

This month’s top 5: Alternate titles for our trip to Montreal

We Went to Montreal, or:

1. House of the Eight Packs of Cards⁴

2. Welcome to the Prom Dress District⁵

3. Codeswitching! At the Gas Station Tim Horton’s

4. Yes, The Metro Still Has Tires⁶

5. You Can Have Death Trap Playgrounds If You Have Universal Healthcare

Ok, the beehiiv built-in footnote feature works for me now but it has one big flaw, which is that if you need to go in and add another footnote between or before existing ones, the new one won’t cause the subsequent ones to be reordered. I’ve got a “7” before 4, 5, and 6, because I had already done 4, 5, and 6, then added something to an earlier section and footnoted it, and since it was the 7th one I added, it was number 7. But it’s located between 3 and 4! It should become 4 and the rest should all move up a number! Computers!!

1  also, there was a wasp on my bus. A WASP!!!

2  after some uncertainty due to the Air Canada strike, which was, to be clear, necessary, and the flight attendants deserve everything they’re asking for and more - but it did mean several days of uncertainty over whether this trip was happening and in what form

3  the standard answer, of course, is “[normal dollar amount] worth of groceries and a tank of gas”

4  i brought one. my mom brought two. there were three regular packs in the airbnb, plus a double pack for bridge(? i don’t know the first thing about bridge)

5  we walked “north” (montreal has a peculiarly skewed idea of directions that everyone must agree to once on the island, but anyway) from our airbnb one evening and suddenly found ourselves faced with storefront upon storefront of spangly dresses and formalwear

6  which, if you ask Matt, means it’s a “glorified bus”

7  or maybe not. maybe his writing suffered in translation, but…

8  well, especially not NOW, seeing as he died two years ago