Deerhunter – Greenpoint Gothic
Maybe it’s because it was such a warm fall, and we had so many sunny days, but it really feels crazy that Christmas is less than a month away. Thanksgiving is late this year so as soon as it’s over, then it’s the sprint to Christmas.
I am not feeling festive for obvious reasons. People keep asking me what I want and the only things I can think of are things people can’t give me. Travel. Financial independence. Insurrectionists in jail. The usual.
Insects vs Robots – Nothing
I’ve got this week off from work, one of those times when you can just take a couple of vacation days and net a much longer time off. Consequently I did a whole lot of nothing today. The usual sort of laundry, errands, kind of nothing, but I didn’t do anything more substantial like plant those bulbs or exercise. I always feel like I should do more when I take time off from work and am just hanging around the house, but I also manage to convince myself that I need the time to just veg and relax.
My son is home for Thanksgiving and he recently got a VR headset. He wanted me to try it and while I really had no interest, I felt like I could humor him and put it on. That was kind of trippy. One game he had me play was some little alien puff balls whose space ship comes crashing through the ceiling and you have to try to hit them with lasers. The other was a lightsaber game that reminded me a little of that Japanese game show, Hole in the Wall as you had to dodge things coming at you and swat away these boxes with your lightsaber at the same time.
I wonder if the headset has some kind of tropical beach scene so you could just put it on and feel like you were actually away on vacation. Kind of Star Trek holodeck style. Now if they could just work out that Star Trek transporter…
Ian Dury and the Blockheads – Reasons to Be Cheerful, Part 3
I got in the car this afternoon and just as I started driving, this song came on the radio. Funny timing because I’d been thinking of it recently, given the state of things.
I am not someone who always looks on the bright side of things, and cheerful is hardly a word I would use to describe myself. However, it’s a good reminder not to focus on the awful things, especially as it gets dark so early. It’s something I need to work on; being present, looking for a positive instead of always seeing the negative, noticing the beauty in small, ordinary things. I think it will be even more important as the shit hits the fan.
Buzzcocks – Noise Annoys
When we moved into the house we live in now, there were a handful of families with kids, like ours, and a larger number of retired people. Lots of old ladies living in big houses by themselves. Most of the kids have grown up and moved out and new families with young kids have been priced out.
At the same time, many of the elderly neighbors have downsized or needed some assistance so they sold their houses. This has created the perfect environment for people with tons of money to swoop in. Rarely the buyer actually lives there. Sometimes they keep it as a second home, but most of the time they make some minor renovations and they rent it out as an Airbnb. This annoys the crap out of me.
In the first place, it turns our neighborhood into a ghost town for much of the week. Then there’s the fact that it’s made housing impossible to come by. No one is going to rent to someone long term for a reasonable price when they can make that same amount of money renting it out for a weekend. When people do rent these big houses for a few days, there are so many people and cars that our normally quiet street is suddenly noisy. Not for nothing, it also means one less voter lives here now.
The house across the street from us sold a year and a half ago. The woman who lived there was a widow and really couldn’t keep up this giant five bedroom house anymore. The guy who bought it had grown up in the area and his parents had a house in the next town over. He and his wife had had a baby and we thought they were looking to relocate to be near family and out of the city, or at least have a summer place. They spent a year making small changes. Then all of a sudden one weekend there were four cars there and lots of people. At first I thought they had just let friends stay there, but when it happened again I went online and sure enough, Airbnb. They are charging something like $800 a night. If you have five couples staying there, it works out to be a bargain, I guess, but now it’s ten people having a party weekend instead of a 70-something year old widow. I am not happy.
Just on my block, on our side of the street only, out of eight houses, there are four that are either second homes the owner uses infrequently or Airbnbs. The other side of the street is pretty much the same.
I’ve never understood why people who rent are seen as undesirable. Transient. We have lived in our house for 20 years now and at this point, we’re the ones who have lived in the neighborhood the longest. The transient ones are the seven cars parked on the street and doubled up in the driveway across the street, partying all weekend.
Horsegirl – Option 8
I went ahead and got a ticket for Horsegirl. Every once in a while I feel a little guilty about going to see a band whose members are young enough to be my children, just in case my being there means some kid isn’t getting the chance to be there. But I don’t want to be relegated to only seeing shows by my contemporaries. I still love those bands, but it’s different, you know?
That said, I did see Billy Bragg twice this year and it was worth the significant distances I drove to do so. He made a comment about people not buying music anymore, so tickets and merch have to cover more of the cost. On that same topic, he mentioned having played on one of those cruises full of bands. It kind of sounded like he felt, gotta go where the people are, but it didn’t really seem like his scene. It wouldn’t be mine either. I would much rather be the mom hanging out at the club full of kids.
The Feelies – Gone, Gone, Gone
There are a couple of Feelies shows in March. Right now I have tickets for Ride in December and Gang of Four in April, but there were a couple of shows announced this week that I think are also in March. I like having tickets for things a couple of months out because it gives me something to look forward to when the winter doldrums hit.
I’m also thinking about that Mama vacation I took in February of 2023. By the time we get to February or March, chances are I will need some kind of escape. Might as well let the concert calendar inform my planning.
Vampire Weekend – Unbelievers
After work I met up with a friend for happy hour. She used to work in the office next to mine but she started a new job about a year ago so we try to get together every couple of months to catch up.
Since we didn’t have a ton of time and we had a bunch of things to update each other on, we didn’t dwell on the shit happening in the world post-election. Acknowledge, express disgust, move on. As a result, I felt like today was one of the most normal days I’ve had in a while.
I can’t go to happy hour every night, once a month would even be a lot for me, but having something else to do after work besides just going home, having dinner, and doomscrolling the evening away, feels healthier. I will have to find a new hobby or something. It’s dark before I get out of work so it would need to be an indoor thing. If only I could work up some enthusiasm for decluttering my house.
Low Cut Connie – Look What They Did
Not that you need a reminder but just for the record, the criminal in chief has always been a con man, grifter, cheat, and a racist piece of trash. He has more bankruptcies than successful business ventures and he’s in the pocket of foreign investors who saw an easy mark and made a buy.
Congratulations, America, you sold out your future to a bunch of billionaires who are going to do to the country what they did to Atlantic City.
Boygenius – Not Strong Enough
I forced myself to go on a walk today. Originally I thought I would try to go for a run but I didn’t have the energy. It was a beautiful day and I thought it might help me feel less like I want a black hole to open in the kitchen if I at least moved and had the sun on my face.
“It would only take the energy to fix it
I don’t know why I am
The way I am, not strong enough to be your man
I try, I can’t stop staring at the ceiling fan and
Spinning out about things that haven’t happened
Breathing in and out”
There should be some time allowed for grieving but instead it’s keep going to work, keep being a parent, wife, daughter, pay the bills, go to the store. Don’t break down in public. And soon it’s Thanksgiving and then Christmas. We are supposed to give gifts and pretend our world isn’t about to end? I know an alarming number of people who either are about to become first time parents or just had a baby. I can’t believe people are having children. What were they thinking?
I want to scream and cry and hit something and get tossed around in a mosh pit, but I also want to be in a coma or on a deserted tropical island and just check out. I am not strong enough to do it all. Giving in to a fascist takeover isn’t an option but I feel like 2016-2020 broke some parts of me. I know, I am spinning out about things that haven’t happened. Yet.
Deep breaths.
Wire – Too Late
These days are hard to get through. I don’t think I am hiding it well either. I need someone to tell me what the plan is so we can crawl out of this existential dread and not just throw up our hands and say, oh well, guess we live in a dictatorship now. Can we get a Democrat to not be John Milquetoast? Can anyone actually be a leader and shake some sense into the rest of our politicians? It doesn’t have to be this way! It doesn’t have to be a foregone conclusion! Don’t sell us out!
Noisy Cats 