Lord

Good lord! What is going on? I am rarely fully on the internet now that it is summer, if you can imagine such a lifestyle, and the only thing I miss is constantly writing about myself on my blog.

Now we are trying to take it a step further and get off our phones more. We are primarily doing this by verbalizing it. “Just now I thoughtlessly went to grab my phone for no reason but instead I didn’t.” “Good job.” We also shame each other. “HONEY? ARE YOU ON YOUR PHONE” “NO!!!!!!!” [sound of phone being hastily set down]

The internet is amazing and only a fool would say otherwise. But why do we have to have it with us everywhere all the time? Why do we have to look at Facebook. Facebook is a disaster, it’s a nightmare, it’s like selling your data to the military or some shit, and even leaving nefarious corporate surveillance aside do we really need to see some random acquaintance’s dumbass uncle weighing in on Hillary Clinton? Look pal, I’ve got my own problems. Okay, but, do I think this is ever going to change? Do I think people are going to for some reason stop looking at their phones every second while they’re talking to each other? Do I think we will ever go back to landlines and answering machines with the big buttons you punch down to hear somebody’s busted voice leaving you a message from hours ago? Am I a goddamn fool? No. But I do have control over my own life and I have to believe that with enough will power I am physically capable of not looking at my phone every two seconds. I have to believe that, as an adult human with a reasonable intelligence, I am capable of doing that. So far I have not proven that I am capable of it, but I have to continue believing that I am. I would get a flip phone except I love google maps too much. Lord these choices, what have I become

I’ve started feeling this pathetic desire to protect my mind, like a baby animal that can’t fend for itself. Warding off evil influences. It is absurd and terrifying how hard it is to just put the phone down, some days. What is even on there? I deleted all my apps and now I don’t even have enough storage space to take a video, but I’m still looking at it all day long? I’m just like scrolling between instagram and literally the weather app, I don’t even have anything ON my phone! Why am I looking at it?? Why am I checking my email at midnight on a Friday while on a dinner date? My EMAIL??? Gotta make sure I get that email from Cornell West or the Humane Society email full of graphic pictures of people killing dogs, right? I certainly should not eat dinner and go to bed on a Friday night without making sure I check up on that situation!! The world needs my hot takes!

I do like instagram. The only celebrities I follow are Chelsea Peretti and Erykah Badu

I don’t mean to sound judgmental; I understand what our contemporary condition is and I am fully a part of it too, even though I don’t understand how the Cloud works.

I love texting with friends

I love that texting and email have enabled me to stay close with a couple really important friends, even after moving across the country.

I love google maps

But I hate my phone. And I hate google. I google things constantly, all day long. I love google. Google is watching me type this right now.

HAPPY SOLSTICE. We went to a solstice party and I ate watermelon and threw the rinds to a bunch of chickens. It was a potluck and three different people brought pesto, including us

My old man is teaching a science fiction class next fall so we are watching a lot of old sci-fi from the 1950s. It’s very interesting. We have learned that H.G. Wells was apparently a total fascist; that the original Godzilla is actually an amazing, affecting, and pretty arty film with an incredible score, we both cried and then dreamed about it, it’s about the atomic bomb in a deep and profoundly tragic way, and there’s this long scene where Godzilla is just sitting underwater like thinking about his life and how the earth has been violated to its very core while this incredibly sad music plays and a scientist in an old-timey diving suit stares at him in shared sorrow and then they both choose to die; that 1950s American sci fi rarely explores what is actually interesting in a given scenario because it’s too focused on serving as American propaganda about how great American heroic men are at defeating commies; that John Carpenter’s The Thing is superior to the Howard Hawks original in spite of the presence of a fast-talkin’ dame in the latter; that in spite of apparently being a total fucking fascist sociopath, H.G. Wells’s novel is better than the 1961 version of “The Time Machine”; and that the American remake of Godzilla from 1956 is too stupid to watch even if it does star a foxy young Raymond Burr (me: “that looks like Raymond Burr!” gary: “it IS Raymond Burr”) because it’s literally just clips from the original movie with Raymond Burr narrating on top of it, and American voices dubbed over the Japanese ones, and Asian Americans cast in the roles of Japanese people who interact with Raymond Burr when he isn’t just narrating clips from the real movie, so it looks like everyone in Tokyo speaks flawless English with a Californian accent, in 1956. Like we see a clip from the original film, of Japanese dudes talking in Japanese about how Godzilla came out of the sea and killed everyone for their scientific hubris, and then we cut to Raymond Burr leaning over to his Japanese friend and being like “Say my Japanese is pretty rusty, what the hell are they yammerin’ about” and then the other guy then just tells him the expository material from the first film, just in English. “They are saying Godzilla came out of the sea and killed everyone for our hubris, you know, the bomb and stuff.” What a racket!

I write every day and then I work in the garden. I don’t know what I am doing.

We are leaving for ten days to go to a family reunion and then to visit a sick friend. My suitcase has mostly books and notebooks in it, and herbal allergy pills.

I wish I had a pair of cute clogs

I’m growing my hair out again, even though it never goes well

I want to read some more dystopian fiction, any recommendations? I have read so much of it, but want more. I wish China Mieville would write another book, what the hell is that man doing, running Marxist conferences or what? WRITE MORE BOOKS CHINA, IF YOU ARE READING THIS.

Our CSA started. We got a shitload of garlic scapes and made pesto. We made way too much pesto. Nobody needs that much pesto. We ate it for dinner and then took it to that solstice party, and we have to eat it again tonight; everyone is sick of the damn pesto. I also ate an entire watermelon the other day and I would have done it again yesterday except there weren’t any in the store. I have these terrible vices, like mineral water and imported fruit, and I struggle against them but often cave. My will power is actually not that great (see above re: phone). We do what we can! LOL that’s obviously not true

I read a booklet about hip dysplasia and rejoined the YMCA, because I learned that exercise doesn’t necessarily make it worse, it just hurts, so who cares. I paid the extra money to get the nice locker room that has the sauna. Bourgeois life baby! With a key to keep out the plebes! Back on the elliptical I go. The nice locker room also has a dimly-lit chill-out yoga space that I monopolize. The last time I went, a lady was doing her hair for the entire time I was stretching, then showering, then changing. She had like three different brushes and several products and her own hairdryer. I got out of the shower and got dressed and raked my fingers through my weird shitty non-haircut and she goes “THAT’S A NO-FUSS CUT!” and it was pretty unclear if she was judging me or approving of me, or if we were both merely regarding one another with a purely anthropological interest. The other night I dreamed I had Helena Bonham Carter’s hair in “A Room with a View” and I woke up filled with longing, but some things are simply not meant to be and that is okay. Anyway, can you imagine how much maintenance that hair takes? I bet you spend two hours a day just dealing with it. Who has the time? Rich 19th century ladies lounging about in Florence, playing Beethoven even though mother says it makes them peevish, that’s who.

Our apple tree isn’t going to bloom this year because an early thaw followed by a sudden frost shocked it. I am so sad about this, I had really been looking forward to seeing it in full bloom. Crossing fingers for next year, but these days who knows (global warming).

We bought an award winning board game called Caverna that has over 300 individual carved wooden pieces, and a 24-page rule book with an 11-page appendix. We had to watch YouTube videos to figure out how to play it. It is AWESOME.

Going in to my new office in the basement tomorrow, gonna arrange the furniture and see if I can hook up my printer. Maybe get a mini fridge up in that shit, get a coffee maker. Really gonna “inhabit the space” now that I finally get my own office. Play some ragtime in there, I don’t give a damn. Continue trying to memorize the Tristan chord, which is weirdly hard for me. Such a great chord! Come on!

Concluding by giving my hot take on the Tristan chord: it’s a great chord