this thing is chock full of software upscaling a la “Let It Be”, and that’s certainly a choice. I know this pisses lots of people off (like normalization, autotune, drum machines, etc) and I’m not gonna tilt at it, it’s just a thing people are doing right now.
I think it’s ok to be mad at the dip in quality between film and digital and not want to present it in 320 lines of blur. I don’t think this is a “let people enjoy things” take.
you may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like https://botsin.space/@wayback_exe/111670277950182240
nice, nice, American Masters: “Max Roach”
kinda fun to have started ( https://mastodon.social/@gravely/109689742882840282) and ended the year w/ Pargin ( https://johndiesattheend.com)—completely unplanned.
23rd book of the year: “Zoey Is Too Drunk for This Dystopia" by Jason Pargin. Fun as expected. A pre-order, because that this point I just subscribe to Pargin stuff.
It’s been two months since I finished anything, my head has not been in the right space to read, I’d bounced off three other things, and I’ve been taking lots of long walks instead.
was looking for a set of configuration params for something incredibly tedious to look up from scratch yesterday
I was pretty sure I’d temporarily had it in an unsaved sublime text tab and stumbled into sublime not only supporting “command-shift-T” to restore closed tabs but that I could keep going, back years in fact. Yikes. Wasn’t there though.
Maybe iTerm? Sure enough: Session -> Open paste history, from three weeks ago.
🏁
kindof a typical weekday: walk the kid to Flynn, continue on to try to hit blocks I’ve never logged walking, do about 5 miles, be back by 9-ish. But, today, I finally logged the last few blocks of Noe in the somewhat arbitrary bounds I established for myself to completion.
New bounds: from Caesar Chavez to 101 to 280 to San Jose Ave.
a friend not on fedi turned me on to “A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs" yesterday. I just enjoyed the first four episodes or so and it’s excellent https://500songs.com
like any hobby I guess, doing this is a great way to shut up my stupid brain, but this one helps me sleep. At least that’s the idea, anyway.
Bernal is next, then Glen Park.
Well this got out of hand, as usual with me.
I wanted to make a goal for myself, so I started adjusting where I went so that I can have walked every street b/w 20th, valencia, 30th, and market (but not market).
The last few walks have been weirdo routes to tag dead end streets and main drags.
I had intended to finish tonight but I was too hungry for the last few blocks of Noe.
Jr., last week, overhearing parent-talk, said “Wait, so if you’re in your forties, so I’m in my five-ies?"
late to this but I really enjoyed Dark (2017) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5753856/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
I get that it’s synecdoche or w/e but the “this bike lane is killing small blah blah” slogan is kinda funny
the entire road was redesigned—parking removed, turns prohibited, etc. so it is annoying to center (heh) the bike lane in the argument when so few bike riders even wanted the stupid thing
if the posters said “SFMTA is killing…” we’d all agree with it
“What about that blue one? We’ll take that one.”
junior is watching a lot of the 1960s Spiderman cartoon lately, which has pretty catchy music that it maybe relies on a bit too much: like it’s always playing one of three for our themes
now, I only know those themes from King Megatrip mixes from twenty years ago ( https://megatrip.blogspot.com/2021/02/king-megatrip-mixtapes-2000-2002.html), who fell out of my syndication subs at some point and I’ve now fixed.
=]
violating my “why would you, a fortuneless person, read a thing for people with fortunes?" self-imposed guidelines to share this hilarious California Forever progress report: https://fortune.com/2023/11/30/california-forever-tech-city-heckle-billionaires-central-valley-flannery-associates/
lmao
camera two, camera one
walked down to and through Glen Canyon after lunch
o/ to the runner who jogged straight up a shortcut from portola’s little dog leg to twin peaks blvd. I was going to head home but decided to follow up instead
decided to try SFMTA’s recommended southwest route ( https://www.sfmta.com/maps/san-francisco-bike-network-map) today: climbed up chavez to tag slow sanchez, then back down to san jose, arlington, hearst, halloway, south around lake merced, and cruised up the great highway to the windmills to head home through the park, wiggle, etc.
Lovely!
oblique strategy
the moment you slide a kitchen aide mixer speed selector from 0 to not 0
you
the moment the mixer begins to mix
I only ever recorded these to get a distance measurement immediately after I was done and had forgotten they were recorded. there’s so much shit out there that we keep forever “for free” and I guess that’s ok but I would also be ok if we did not do this at all, it’s all so arbitrary
so I walk a few miles every morning looked for an app help me be more intentional about taking streets I’ve never taken before and was susprised when https://citystrides.com/ pulled in… every walk I’ve ever recorded in strava.
it’s neat seeing the stark difference between tight squiggles of political lit drops up and down steps from years ago (usually hanging door cards on every house doorknob on a turf of a few blocks) next to meanderings of normal walks on sidewalks
I normally that find perpetual schadenfreude wears pretty thin (in that it doesn’t work to make me feel any better and is eventually a real bummer. I’m glad it helps other people though.)
But this guy is just so incredibly annoying. So, sorry about that. Won’t make it a habit.
jeeze, I guess I’s best be avoiding that fella in my business dealings [slaps open a metal ticket book, removes a bic pen, licks a finger, flips to the first empty page of an 8” x 5” legal pad, licks the pen tip, and begins writing: s, a, m, et cetera]
commuting a few blocks out of my way for some (but not enough) safety delenda est
that said, this route is so much better than it used to be!
I left to meet the fam for 5pm dinner after this (DST delenda est).
The worker in charge (idk ranks) told me it smelled like paper burning and I agree. The garage was, from what i saw, mostly storage of somebody’s stuff and not actively used for parking or w/e. Sorry somebody! That stinks.
And after, just this morning, walking past Cellarmaker as they cleaned up a broken plate glass window.
Bummer of a day!
I called 911 on an active fire on Osage St. (the half block west of / behind Mission St) this evening near 26th because I saw a garage door smoking in a funny way. (nobody was hurt afaik)
SFFD made from a few blocks away in about 90 seconds? It was pretty remarkable. They had to chainsaw the door off and use hoses on it.
Anyway, I’ve never done that before, nice to have on hand!
that everyone fuckin’ hates DST yet we still have it is p effective propaganda
have been going for walks every weekday morning for the past two weeks after dropping the kid off at school and following “whatever is steeper" holistic routes
Yesterday, we dropped junior off at Flynn and then climbed the steps south from Cesar Chavez near the highway and went around the east of Bernal.
It’s fun to see out parts of the city I’ve seen from afar for years, and this area specifically would make for a great new walk or two in Bakalinski’s Stairway Walks of SF
To the south: San Francisco? Daly City?
To the east: US 1
We camped at Slide Ranch the night before last.
Pretty nice! Our 5 yo had a blast.
In addition to the farm with chickens, sheep, and goats, the camp site is well sited, and from it, there is a trail down to pacific ocean tide pools.
jimmy fallon at band of brothers s1e5
Slide Ranchallones
damn!
lived near the 33, 14, 49, etc for a while and got really spoiled by reasonable headways
now I’m by the 27, a perfect door to door school bus for my kid, on paper, if only the headway nearly three times as long as the 49’s. It is faster to just walk.
didn’t notice I’d stacked my bigfoot monster truck shirt with a bigfoot beer hat, wife did though
https://thecinemaholic.com/bodies-iris-kyal-elias-new-timeline/ this cinemaholic piece calls an LP record that is showing being cut live and played back on a record player multiple times throughout the series a “tape” throughout the piece 🫠
the second funniest thing in the new yorker thing about san francisco was the grow sf people wearing their own swag
the funniest thing was the retiree calling a biz tax “punitive", which, like, I’m not a lawyer, but, lol, lmao
0.175 percent to 0.69 (nice) percent on gross receipts for businesses with over $50 million in gross annual receipts, or
1.5 percent of payroll expenses for certain businesses with over $1 billion in gross annual receipts and administrative offices in San Francisco.
this was not about mack “the navigator” andyson when i wrote it, but today it is
what finally makes the man start to crack is seeing a woman on a bicycle, war never changes
http://www.online-literature.com/anton_chekhov/1289/ Anton Chekhov on next-door-posting, every-day-carry types of 1898, “The Man in the Case” ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_in_the_Case)
Fun. I’m reading some light socialist realism, "Stalingrad”, by Vasily Grossman, and this story came up in reference with a footnote so I tracked it down.
hegemony havers complaining about their critics while getting their way are ridiculous. this message repeats.
absolutely not, app badges privileges revoked
![iPhone "Phone" app screenshot, text over a button:To retrieve a voicemail first set a password and greeting.[Set Up]](/.11ty/image/?src=content%2Fmastodon%2F2023%2F10%2F12%2F111219278916492539.jpeg&width=732&format=webp&via=transform)
I skipped the damned introduction (as per. I don’t read introductions first, they are for re-readers) and read it after, which is a lot of words to say some interesting things but mostly conclude that Walter Benjamin gets the closest to figuring Kafka out
so I’ve now got https://docslib.org/doc/5900836/franz-kafka-on-the-tenth-anniversary-of-his-death open to maybe read, maybe abandon, at some later time, idk
22nd book of the year: “The Trial" by Franz Kafka.
Someone in Bernal Heights (Bonview at or near Cortland? It was a few months ago) left a box of books on the sidewalk with “FREE” written on a flap that had a few things I grabbed, among them, DFW’s “Consider the Lobster, and other essays” which I started and abandoned (lol), and this.
I enjoy stuff like this from time to time but don’t think I’m “smart enough” for it, whatever that means (and I’m not entirely sure).
arrabbiata base is just garlic, tomato, salt¹ and pepper²
¹ kosher, anchovy
² paprika, cracked black, red flakes, greek pepperocini
trip report: if they did it wasn’t up to the day or crowd, it was hot as hell in there
nevertheless, great show
does bill graham have air conditioning? going to the qotsa show tonight and haven’t been there on a hot day before
two nights of clean living, exercising again after a week of office work followed by a weekend house guest, plus a new pillow top on the bed, fell asleep at 9:30, did not wake up until 5:45.
i will learn nothing from this pleasant experience.
Hosting my kid’s birthday party yesterday answering a friend’s question, “so how do you know all of these kids?”
“Well that kid is so and so, they went to pre-school together. And that kid is so and so, they are in TK together. That kid in the red shirt is, ah, jeeze, a friend’s kid who we see all the time but I’m completely blanking on their name"
She says, “Yeah, that’s so and so.”
I say, "right, I forgot.”
Then I realize I’m talking to the kid in the red shirt’s mom.
o/ to whoever left an entire box of http://www.totalgrantsolution.org mugs on the sidewalk by my place today. my first name is Grant so I grabbed two of them. the saul bass lookin’ design and generic company name are perfect
guy next to me on bart is reading the last few pages of The Road between civic center and the mission, brutal
It’s all in the second person, which i got used to but, ugh
it’ll probably make an OK movie
it reminded me a lot of Jeff Noon who I enjoy more for this kind of thing
Being set in and about Sri Lanka and Sri Lanka politics was really neat
it’s pretty brutal in some places, which I don’t get down with
the twist was annoying
the last 20 pages were not needed
21st book of the year: “The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida”, by Shehan Karunatilaka
A friend posted that they’d just read a book that they think might be the best book they’d ever read, and it was this one. 4, 3, 2, 1 was listed for a Booker and this one won the prize? OK, I’ll try it.
I really wanted to like it more than I did, and the second act really flows well, but I had a hard time finishing it, today, finally. It’s right up my alley in lots of ways. v0v
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57224204-the-seven-moons-of-maali-almeida
stunt dark, labor free (free as in time)
my kid (5y old this week!) has been obsessed with building stuff out of cardboard after drawing front back top and sides and cutting them out and wanted me to make a transformer yesterday
so i searched for patterns and fell down a papercraft hole, do not recommend
fiddly as shit i had to do all of the assembly myself
he loves them though!
also, cyberdrone’s deviantart is wild: https://www.deviantart.com/cyberdrone
i learned to make roux for gumbo from dad’s pal from boot camp, who was from louisiana, and he taught us the patient “stir, stir, stir, heat, stir, but whatever you do, don’t burn!” method.
it stinks to stand over and mind and is apparently a recent trend. like, originally, people just didn’t make roux so dark that it was so much work
but i do like my roux dark, so i start a few hours earlier and bake it at 350F, slight stir every half hour or so, easy mode
✅ boosted, ✅ flu vaxed, ✅ guy giving me the shot asked if I was a swimmer on account of these deltoids
incredibly neat to me, after having read it, to learn that Kohlhaas was a historical person ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Kohlhaas), that Marthin Luther actually did attempt to intercede, and even cooler, that Kohlhaas was out doing direction actions for 8 years to get justice before the state got him (and broke him on the wheel, yikes)
also there’s of course a feature film which I’m probably not gonna bother with but what if it’s good idk https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2054790/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
20th book of the year: “Michael Kohlhaas”, by Heinrich von Kleist. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Kohlhaas)
4 3 2 1 was full of writers learning the trade from other writers and hundreds of books are mentioned. I’m sure I’ll thumb through it for more suggestions but this one was the first I chose.
I think probably best to go in completely without any idea what it is beyond: german, written early 1800s, takes place in the 1500s, and Kafka, of all people liked it a lot.
The ebay search paid off and I was able to buy a pair of out-of-production pants identical to ones I already own (noticing as I post this that I’m wearing the original pair right now) for next to nothing because I like the pair I have and want them to live forever and this is one way to cheat commodity death. huzzah.
Telling a friend about 4, 3, 2, 1 over dinner, I said it was romantic and lovely, if you didn’t mind new yorkers in love with new york, ellis island through the 60s, the anti-war movement, and all that shit we’ve heard so much about, which I did not mind.
Later, while my kid was eating pizza and getting sauce two inches up both cheeks, I asked him to fold it in half and the guy at the next table who’d overheard me laughed and said "I’m from New York and it’s really like all of that, you know”
19th book of the year, “4, 3, 2, 1", by Paul Auster ( https://www.sfgate.com/books/article/4321-by-Paul-Auster-10889359.php)
Loved it, spent most of my spare time since I started it with it, will miss it, probably missed a lot in it.
🎼 “Lines form on my face and hands"
Yeah it be like that
🎤 "Lines form from the ups and downs”
ikr?
🎸 “I’m in the middle without any plans"
Aren’t we all?
🤘🏼 “I’m a boy and I’m a man”
Yeah I feel like I’ve I’m on my third mid-life cri—
👼🏼 “I’m eighteen!"
Jesus H. Christ! No! Shut up!
🤌🏼
Youtube is so great for guitar players. Via Norman’s Rare Guitars “Guitar of the Day”, in addition to the hosts, I got into Josh Smith, and from Josh to Bruce Foreman, and also from Josh to Greg Koch.
Got a ticket to finally see Bruce Foreman in three weeks at the Keys Jazz Bistro, hell yeah.
Up all night worrying that we haven’t begun design let alone construction of a thousand foot tall colossus (my preferred design is a phoenix looking west) atop earthworks in the san francisco bay, which, as a long term serious thinker, is my only political issue
“there are only one shelter bed for every 15 people sleeping on the streets and some judge has the nerve—” Shut up! Shut up! What about the colossus?!
this
post
was
drafted
with
four
leading
spaces
on
every
line
“It’s so dark with all this wood paneling, so to brighten it up, we’re going to paint it all this true white, and the walls this more neutral blue/gray. To separate these two rooms, we had a local artisan make this barn door to hang on rollers.”
“Wow, it really does look like a barn door with these rails and stiles.", Norm said.
“And for this accent wall, we were thinking, shiplap.”
getting really close to watching the video cassette of space balls the movie w/ my This Old House speed run, and it is terrible. I’m now skipping the interior design nonsense like I already skip any home alarm system nonsense.
the corrupt frisco wallet inspector is still funny as hell https://missionlocal.org/2023/08/rodrigo-santos-sentenced-to-prison/
alright, “4321” has my attention, this is lovely
18th book of the year: “SPQR”, by Mary Beard
Wanted to read some history after the last few things. Kept seeing Beard press over the years, saw she has a new book out and grabbed a used copy of her old stuff instead.
lotta “assassinated for tyranny after proposing social and/or land use reforms” Kermit-confused-face.bmp
lotta good stuff on how normal people lived
next up, the most recent Paul Auster, “4321”, cya in like a month or two probably
oh, one thing you’ve learned was against your will? must be nice!
asleep by 9:15, wake up at 4, mentally review damage taken (doh) and given (oops) yesterday, pad down to the kitchen at 5, turn the lights on as dim as they go, make coffee, start to read scrollback and accruing damage for the day
get annoyed by the ambient noise the fridge is making, use a smart-switch to power off the fridge, replace it with ambient noise somebody else made, cozy up by the speaker https://schwebung.bandcamp.com/album/radiance
kid up at 5:40, we’re watching spiderman and doing the moves :||
lol lmao that ‘judgement’ is correctly spelled ‘judgment’ in some uses and visa versa
c’mon
17th book of the year: “The Palm-Wine Drinkard” and “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts” by Amos Tutuola ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/303496.The_Palm_Wine_Drinkard_My_Life_in_the_Bush_of_Ghosts)
The story I enjoyed in Black Water 2 was an excerpt from “The Palm-Wine Drinkard” (which is subtitled “and his dead Palm-Wine Tapster in the Deads’ Town)
I preferred the drinkard because more of the stories in it seem like little self-contained myths. And of course I’m glad to now have a connection back to the Byrne/Eno album that I love.
fake-warning “a man recommending a podcast"
I had intended to stop consuming “the left stays losing" stuff for a bit because it is so g d depressing but https://the-santiago-boys.com is really, really good
hashtags Allende EvgenyMorozov StaffordBeer ThePurposeOfASystemIsWhatItDoes Nixon CIA blah blah
very belatedly getting into Unknown Mortal Orchestra https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-36lCKovBg
also, re-reading Bartleby (the original anti-makin’ copies guy) reminded me that 1) he has office mates named Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut (tag yourself) and 2) “I would prefer not to” is only his first catch phrase, once he wore that out he pivoted to "I am not particular.” which is also delicious.
had mini-split air conditioning installed in our place last month, where i work from home, at great expense and wall-destruction, and now that it’s summer in the west bay I’m sitting in the cat bird seat
I think merchant associations should have a seat at the table sike!
first day of public school for junior (t. k. at Flynn) and well, well, well, if it isn’t my old nemesis, the prison-wall face with ever-changing hands which slow down the more you glance at them. slower and slower, slower and slower. but to look away is impossible
the real best part though? I bought both 1 and 2 used as paperbacks and they are both about 1000 pages and about 70-90 stories but Black Water 2 was printed on much lighter paper than Black Water, which made holding the damned thing open to read much less uncomfortable.
16: “Black Water 2, More Tales of the Fantastic” loved it, full of surprises and delights from authors I’ve never heard of and authors most have — Arthur Conan Doyle, F Scott Fitzgerald, E B White, Joseph Conrad, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Margret Atwood, George Bernard Shaw , Arthur C Lark) — and stories too , like Melville’s Bartleby.
"The Complete Gentleman” turned me onto Amos Tutuola, who I’m now reading in full.
And a story from Isabell Allende?! Nice.
previously: https://mastodon.social/@gravely/110403938932091902
the only challenge coin i’ve ever kept
finally signing up for tsa [spits on the ground] pre and mad about this form question
[TMBG voice] there’s only two parties in me, and I’m heading to the third
Least favorite usually-reactionary move is when they say they are against something for the preposterous reason of, not-getting-it.
“I don’t get it.”
If you don’t get it, why not be FOR it until you do, or at least get the heck out of the way, knuckleheads.
it is so weird how having hobbies is coped with by randos at parties who I assume are just thinking out loud
“oh, you’re a ___ guy?"
alright, hold your horses, no, don’t have that kind of attention span. I’m also mildly interested in and but don’t try to identify as into eight or nine other things, alright?
more like sunburn streets
Ship of Calrisseus
municipal yachting
What if 🥺 we kissed 😳 at the 🙅🏻♂️ giant fenced in 🧩 mystery field-of-mulch 🍂 in front of st lukes 🏥 at the muni bus stop that 🚍 buses only ever use to take🥱 breaks?
reading up on Boris Vian ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Vian) after enjoying his very surreal story, “The Dead Fish.” What a way to go out mad!
went to grab Black Water 2 off the table only to find that a little spider was using it to build a web over the tv. spooky!
not the first time this series has summoned bugs. previously https://mastodon.social/@gravely/110209784638054304
sfmta I challenge y’all to not concern troll this excellent feedback on your L by complaining about defacements
in a world, where two movies come out around the same time, and every single person on earth seems to notice for some reason almost as if they were directly participating in a coordinated marketing campaign for one or the other or both movies, idk idk, ahem, ahem. every poster, must fight to survive
exactly one block of this otherwise lovely ride was dumb enough for a car (perhaps London Breed herself!) to honk at me.
assuming tenth-of-a-mile blocks, punters have about a 0.00043% chance of guessing which one it was!
Municipal Legacy Business Equity Agency
my go to red sauce for two starts with the oil: a half cup, a quarter cup, and an eighth cup, to extract garlic, basil, and pepper, to fry the tomatoes, and to finish with butter and cheese, respectively
fifteen: Egan again. I knew I’d have a 10 hours of plane time, so I brought “Oceanic” ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6741362-oceanic) and it delivered.
Egan’s political and hard science (the bulk of this set) stories are my favorites while the atheist ones like the title story “Oceanic” are probably more interesting to previously religious people, which I never was. I’ve always found faith to be entirely inscrutable, so exploring losing it is kinda just more of that to me?
introduced to Amos Tutuola’s “The Complete Gentleman” ( https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/11169484-the-complete-gentleman) via “Black Water 2.” Tutuola’s novel “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts” is what Brian Eno and David Byrne’s 1981 album is named after, which i did not know about and now would like to read.
i can’t find you a copy but here’s a fun analysis: https://www.tor.com/2018/12/19/i-aint-got-no-body-amos-tutuolas-the-complete-gentleman/
tacked a few days before a wedding to visit burlington, vermont for a day (lovely) and stay in a lake house on upper saranac lake (pictured, also lovely) for a two
had to “Draw a bunny" for a work training thing and there weren’t any rules so I printed someone else’s garfield sonic chimera, placed the paper out over my ipad, and used an apple pencil to trace their illustration into a notes.app note.
nothing about this is mine except for the ears, tail, and color
the center lane should instead be an overhead-wire trolly (modern or historical, w/e) that just bounces between mission and market all day long, back and forth, back and forth. I wonder what the headways would be with such a short route and where the shunting or passing spots might fit?
people double park in the center turn lane between chavez and 22n on Sundays mostly, to go to https://realitysf.com or when the lot overflows at the https://www.driscollsmortuary.com
afaik there is no legitimate other reason for the center lane to even exist. Lefts from Valencia are not causing traffic jams like lefts off of east bound Cesar Chavez do
Given they can just as easily double park on the new death-lane, why didn’t the city extend the death-lane to Mission??
I had to buy a new suit to wear to friend’s wedding because I’ve been [smug pause] working out often enough that my size 40 jacket doesn’t fit anymore. turns out i’m a 42 now.
extremely bored with our neo-gilded age and the affairs of our aristocrats. nonsense.
fourteen: Greg Egan again, “Luminous”. It is out of print, but available self published by the author. The stories from just after those in Axiomatic (previously: https://mastodon.social/@gravely/109661276920611083),
Some fun stuff, although I would have liked it a lot more had I read it contemporaneously, when I was in my own more annoying atheist phase.
threading “Black Water 2” stories w/ the “Black Water” stories
"The Phoenix” by Sylvia Townsend Warner
zz of unstoppable force
Munro has been a welcome break from the masculine, genre-dominated shit I’ve been reading. Shelving this one my shelf next to a pile of Murakami with only "Everyone In Silico” by Jim Munroe ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/342203.Everyone_in_Silico) between, as a mediator of sorts, makes for a heck of a counterpoint.
Unlike (or, like?) Murakami, Munro’s women age (natch) and have their own experiences, inner lives, and desires. Munro’s also a slightly more interesting prosist (to me).
previously: https://mastodon.social/@gravely/109702814505504502
thirteenth book of '23, “Wilderness Station" ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25194123-a-wilderness-station) by Alice Munro (previously issued as "Selected Stories” ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14281.Selected_Stories)).
Wow! Loved it.
The “Selected Stories” title has had time to be rated and critiqued by much more careful readers. Lots of comparisons to Chekov, who I suppose I’ll check out next. I’ll also definitely be getting the companion collection, Family Furnishings, Selected Stories 1995-2014.
neapolitan pizza topped with hand crushed san marzano, anchovies, capers, black olives, mozz, pecorino, pep, olive oil
very good, I should have baked it a bit longer (like, ten seconds longer)
not pictured: wildflowers galore, oops!
anyway here’s a daisy that I liked at St. Mary’s playground (my photo), which has a great slide! (not my photo)
took Friday off and went on a hike to Black Sands Beach via Julian Trail ( https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/california/black-sands-beach-via-julian-trail)
was thinking this morning how I missed "that dj that used to open 6AM with the same Billie Holiday song every morning on KCSM and was a great interviewer” even though our kid is old enough that I’m not up that early every day (just every few days) anymore
Her name is Alisa Clancy, and it looks like a boss was involved in her retirement? Dumb. https://www.sfcv.org/articles/feature/kcsms-alisa-clancy-signs
my plan for when I finally ghost on everyone is to still be self aware enough to not gotta give people thirty to fifty years younger than me one last spoonful of pablum they didn’t ask for on my way out the door 😉 😉 😉
joked to myself the other day “wow it must have been windy last night" as I passed the flattened flex-post on east-bound 17th at Gus’s, but it’s been that way since at least January.
this is what passes for a compromise on the city’s bike network map ( https://www.sfmta.com/maps/san-francisco-bike-network-map)
this morning I watched someone slowly drive over it, front left wheel, back left wheel, to park, 🙃
finally made it to salesforce park today with junior. incredibly rad the that we as a society have somehow made one, single, incredibly nice (mid) multi-story boondoggle bus stop instead of improving every other bus stop even slightly, like it’s almost, as if the author, were trying to, very clumsily, make a point, about, nah, no, couldn’t be, that would mean that, wow, no way
“Hi, do you work here?”
“No. Does it look like I work here?”
“Yeah, kinda.”
“Fuck!”
is that the annoying over-40 poster?
[I start complaining about stupid motorcycles and car alarms to nobody in particular]
yep
thanks car-London, for telling the [adrian belew voice] ”this is a dangerous place!" story to everybody in ear shot, threatening to get the cops involved but not actually usefully getting anyone involved at all, just being annoying to everyone around, and useless, to boot
really enjoying Alice Munro stories, more than I expected, and a little bummed that I don’t remember who suggested them.
I started with the '68–’94 collection, “A Wilderness Station”, great stuff so far!
gravely started reading A Wilderness Station
I haven’t gotten covid yet because of my positive mental attitude, which you can tell I have because I’m cracking trying to say this with a straight face
As a fun thought experiment, every time I hear a car alarm going off in the city, I think to myself: Wow, our great Mayor, London Breed, who is a car, must really love San Francisco. There she is, living her best life, occupying a parking spot, honking her horn with devotion.
Honk! Honk! Honk!
So inspiring! 🤗🌁
michael moritz is immune to spoonerism and thus an unstoppable foe
look
“michael moritz”
see? doesn’t work
christ, what an asshole
I’ve only ever read one other collection of stories that was so well assembled I chased the editor before the various authors therein and that was Otto Penzler.
So, if Black Water looks fun to you (it was for me!), I also recommend Penzler’s collections: “The Best American Mystery Stories of the Twentieth Century”, “The Best American Mystery Stories of the Nineteenth Century”, and “The Best American Noir of the Century” ( https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/12471.Otto_Penzler?utf8=✓&sort=popularity)
twelfth book of '23 for me, "Black Water: The Book of Fantastic Literature” ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53080.Black_Water I started a Bookwyrm and posted there too but, alas no one there has reviewed it yet), edited by Alberto Manguel. 72 fantastic stories in a door stop of a paper back (at least that’s how I read it), each one with a contextual introduction, and organized into themes.
I’m now looking forward to starting the second one Manguel collected, Black Water 2.
Previously: https://mastodon.social/@gravely/109372394967950916
gravely finished reading Black Water
on the home stretch (about a dozen stories or 200 pages left) and then I added “Black Water 2” to the to-read pile
One of the fun things about the older stories is that when you like them you can just find and share them:
THE GREY ONES
(1953)
J. B. PRIESTLEY
“Little Lebowski Thirsty Strivers”
friday night is pizza night for junior (and I) and I’ve pretty much got his favorite NY style pepperoni dialed in now, this was perfect
gravely finished reading Axiomatic
gravely finished reading If This Book Exists, You’re in the Wrong Universe
gravely finished reading Stories of Your Life and Others
gravely finished reading Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki
gravely finished reading Kitchen Confidential
gravely finished reading Ursula K. Le Guin: The Hainish Novels and Stories: A Library of America Boxed Set
gravely finished reading Good Strategy Bad Strategy
gravely finished reading The museum of eterna’s novel
gravely finished reading Novel Explosives
gravely finished reading Destroyer of Worlds
gravely finished reading Sea of Tranquility
https://techbrosf.weebly.com/fentalife.html that’s numberwang!
the flowers my wife gave me for our wedding anniversary has ranunculus in it and 1. cool, never noticed this kind of flower before 2. what a fun name to say
ranunculus!
eleventh book, Emily St. John Mandel’s "Sea of Tranquility” ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45754981-the-glass-hotel)
More of a novella really, and while I have a pithy “oh it’s like this” comparison I’ll resist sharing the spoiler. I will say that I wish I’d read her previous book, “The Glass Hotel” first because they seem to share characters.
Anyway, yeah, “Station 11” author, if you liked that you’ll like this.
looks like the everloving wife has taken to tagging the neighborhood
living in the future, record scratch
… my knee-jerk to lots of stuff, but this morning to delivery app restaurant fee cap expirations
hey this guy that gets to tell us what to do because he has $500,000,000 and we don’t would like us to commute out to another company’s office which used to be in the city but isn’t anymore because ugh, city taxes
he’s giving a fake interview because he thought of new things to tell us to do now that our shared presence isn’t a potential death sentence. we’re calling it a fireside chat!
all the gang is gonna be there, even a magazine called “Fortune" which is definitely for “us” 😉 😉
“‘Sun of the wolves’, a metaphor for the moon”, delicious.
the a.i.'s are going to both create the designer drugs seen in pkd novels we will all get addicted to and power the argumentative doors that demand micropayments to navigate our own crummy conapts seen in pkd novels
casting call for generic extra at pre-school drop off
i’ve got a saved search on ebay for levis cords in my size - works great, already snagged a pair in an out-of-production color that i’m wearing in one of my pinned posts
anyway, today’s hit is fun for two reasons: 1) I’ve never seen this red pointer before and love it, 2) it looks like someone blew the back out of these things?
I’m gonna pass on them
huh, I think this petard is one I made, I wonder what that’s doing here
the bike infra surrounding UCSF (edit: mission bay) is extremely mid—flex post half-bike lanes (the right half of bike lanes between car lanes and parking lanes are actually door lanes) and sharrows, all of which pick up from and dump you nowhere
but the stoplights? really pretty bad. long timing, poor sensors, beg buttons etc. might as well be in Redwood City because they ignore me and I ignore them
nice, Black Water has “The Monkey’s Paw” in it, ( https://www.owleyes.org/text/monkeys-paw/read/) shortly followed by another wishing tale: Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Bottle Imp”.
where better to start a story about wish than a hilltop mansion so earned in san francisco https://americanliterature.com/author/robert-louis-stevenson/short-story/the-bottle-imp
me: sir, reporting to discord support for duty, sir
open source volunteer: what is it now, computer janitor
me: sir, I’m stuck trying to get this feature to work after performing all of the rituals, sir
open source volunteer: that feature doesn’t work right now.
me [quietly, to myself, fist pumping in the air, ‘I knew it! for fuck’s sake’]: sir, thank you very much, sir.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lp_sjTfmJQ “One Moment Please” - Romaal Kultan - the soundtrack of me flipping from chat to tab to chat to tab to email to chat to thinking about dinner looking for my shoes in four places for the third time going back to chat, posting about RSA because it came to mind, hearing this song, that synth line making me anxious as hell, finding my shoes, shazaming the song, posting it, lol gd that line is anxious, I gotta go for a walk
Sitting criss-cross applesauce on a gym mat in my exercise get-up with my eyes closed and my arms raised into broadcast position calming emitting ”I’m not going to RSA" energy to universe.
Okay, that should work, I think to myself, foolishly.
view from the dentist’s chair
the last time I yelled at someone doing the same thing at the same intersection, the guys working the oil change spot got on their drive through intercom PA and said [PHSK!] “STOP YELLING”
(also not trying to be a bike account but this shit happens multiple times a day but we just talked about this spot lolsob)
lmao a driver going south on Valencia turning right on Duboce with the windows all the way down inching into the bike lane was loudly scolded into the open passenger window by two guys ahead of me YOU ARE TURNING RIGHT ON A NO TURN RED while they pointed at the signs as I approached behind them hitting both of my breaks turned turned right on the red
purpose of a system is what does yes I know it’s 420 but c’mon they had an SF parking sticker on the bumper, they’re a local
everloving wife couldn’t find my wool cardigan to steal so she put on the very moth eaten cashmere pullover that she asks me to get rid of every single time i wear, going on ten years, since the moths were a real problem, and which she had never ever worn before, on account of all the moth holes in it, and said “damn sweater is comfy as hell.”
not my goofy ass sitting on a log reading Italo Calvino’s “The Argentine Ant” only to discover by feel that I am sitting on a damned ant hill as they crawl up my back under my shirt 😬🤣 ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6752551)
the everloving wife and I made about an eighth of the way around Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park with junior and my dad in the back seat yesterday (so about 650 pounds passenger load) in one of those little peddle boats before my legs said to turn around
Lovely to be on the water but I’m definitely getting a row boat next time. The “bike seat height” equivalent is bottomed out so my legs barely made it past 90 degrees at extension. I’m about 6’0”.
tenth book, Matt Ruff’s “Lovecraft Country” sequel, “The Destroyer of Worlds” ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61190257-the-destroyer-of-worlds)
I’ve been a huge fan of Ruff since “Sewer, Gas, and Electric" ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/71846.Sewer_Gas_and_Electric) and of course the Lovecraft Country show was also p good (although a bit scary for my tastes), so, picking this up after Novel Explosions was a great call.
it usually drives me crazy when writers (borrowing another afterword word) peacock how well-read or at least broadly-read they are, or explode every scene into a McMaster-Carr order, but the half-a-dozen fields expanded in Novel Explosives and the etymology there-in kept my attention.
ninth book, a real (borrowing from the afterword) wrist-punishing, discursive, door-stopper: “Novel Explosives" by Jim Gauer ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29363276-novel-explosives)
I looked for a review that resonated: https://books.substack.com/p/review-joy-williams-on-jim-gauer
eponymous peaks
so clearly the goal isn’t zero deaths, and the city should drop the vision zero pretense, it is absolutely stollen valor at this point
I’m also pretty unsatisfied w/ the SF Bike Coalition line on this. They’ve never, in the history of the organization, been radical, but c’mon y’all “centering merchants voices?” sounds like something london breed would say.
I probably won’t renew my membership #BicyclingInSanFrancisco
if your goal is zero deaths, this ain’t it. if your goal is zero injuries, this definitely ain’t it.
We already have this pattern northbound on Valencia at 14th (at Zeitgeist). I always assume I’m going to be killed here and take the car lane before the intersection if I can, I’ve seen too many rights on red bearing down on other cyclists here
it isn’t the driver’s fault, it’s simply a design failure with band-aides. it relies on signs, paint, and enforcement.
what really grinds my gears about the design is the repeated references to paint, signs, and enforcement: no left turn, no turn on red, and so on: imaginary safe places to be next to actually unsafe places to be
maybe it’s my stupid vulgar marxism, or engineer-brain but that smacks of liberal metaphysics to me: deeply unserious magical thinking that inherently tolerates failure for the insanely shitty reason that its credulous to other unserious critics
so anyway, with an upside down muni track painted green, I’ll have to pretty much stop my bike to enter an unobstructed travel lane mid-block when the curbed bike lane is obstructed, so I will probably try to look farther up ahead and do it at intersections. it’s gonna be dumb but I’ll cope #BicyclingInSanFrancisco
I immediately take the car lane for the full block as soon as I see a car in the current bike lanes. “I got us a lane, come on in fellow riders, I think to myself”, and maybe I’m imaging it but I usually get a vibe of relief when the see another cyclist stuck in the bike lane realize that they can join me safely
(while on bad days I’ll also mentally add, to myself, ”the people in cars will never respect you for following their rules, look out for yourself first”)
here’s a tag you can mute, no hard feelings, ok cya later: #BicyclingInSanFrancisco
the new valencia bicycle lane design is effectively an upside down muni track painted green down the center. I expect cyclists to eat shit when they try to enter or exit it mid-block just like we already eat shit when we have to ride parallel to them.
That afternoon, walking in the garden, the prince came face to face with Death. “Why,” he asked, “did you make a threatening gesture at my gardener this morning?” “It wasn’t a threatening gesture,” answered Death. “It was a gesture of surprise. I saw him far from Ispahan this morning and I knew I must take him in Ispahan tonight.”
another one! “Death and the Gardener” by Jean Cocteau, fits in two posts:
A young gardener said to his prince, “Save me! I met Death in the garden this morning and he made a menacing gesture. Tonight I wish by some miracle I could be far away, in Ispahan”. The prince lent him his swiftest horse.
going back for more Black Water, “Enoch Soames: A Memory of the Eighteen-Nineties” ( https://www.fulltextarchive.com/book/Enoch-Soames/) is fun both as a story and as motivation for silly nonsense (cw: spoiler,: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/11/a-memory-of-the-nineteen-nineties/376995/)
(if you haven’t made risotto m. recently, that’s about a hundred bucks worth of saffron. when I buy it at the grocery store I can get a hundredth of an ounce in a weird little bag for seven bucks)
i’m sitting here watching this old jacques pepin video, he’s making a risotto milanese (with american brown rice), and he gets to the saffron and just whips out a tin that has an ounce of god damned saffron in it, lmao ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5vUuLh3ASQ)
“centering" “voices” “communities” “most vulnerable” “advocates”, etc, while maybe not originally liberal nonsense, is now definitely liberal nonsense. Stop the nonsense!
I could fix valencia street
https://youtu.be/R5mAuPg1ZZw damn, dude
scribbling “meteorologists" under “doctors” on the list of people I’m cool with but looking forward to hearing from less
oops, broke off the first cork screw, sending a second one in after it
orchid a-comin’
huh, never heard of a “clarihew” ( https://archive.org/details/biography00chesuoft/page/10) poem before: a sort of shitty limerick about a historical figure. Cute. Named after the author of a book of them.
Terrible. 😂
This Chico Freeman jazz tune, “The Search” ( https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-outside-within-mw0000090953) just came around on NTS Expansions ( https://www.nts.live/infinite-mixtapes/expansions) and made me put my book down and look it up. Cool line!
wind gust max speed in the mission hit 27.7 mph on my little sensor in the alley so far today. neat.
I read this one back in 2013 and I’m sure there are more modern treatments (which I’d be happy to hear about) but if you want get a 1987 perspective on the failed promises of computer skill acquisition you would probably do worse than to read Dreyfus & Dreyfus’s "Mind Over Machine: The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Era of the Computer” ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1039572.Mind_Over_Machine).
This post was written by a human.
peeking into the party around the person I don’t know who opened the door: Hey!
Slightly later over a beer: uh, so what do you do? (people love this question)
Oh me? I’m a founder. We make [unintelligible]. Haha, yeah, no, it’s software for cold calling people. No yeah it still “works” ha ha ha. You don’t answer your phone? Wow do you mind if I double-click on that, I [looks into the camera] “do not get it” (I’m trying to make my catchphrase go viral at the party)
Ah, jeeze, these hamsicks and circle-As are really picky about having the crust cut off of their diagonal cut PB&Js and the skins peeled off of their apple slices and etc, and etc. I really [looks into the camera] “do not get it” (I’m trying to make my catchphrase go viral)
inventing a new “federal housing insurance corporation” as a thought experiment and being tackled and beaten unconscious by 90 Stanford grad founder-in-bio posters wearing Fnord brand “punch left" gear I didn’t even know sports basement sold because that part of the store is invisible to me, a normal person
four other braun clocks throughout the house (the only other clocks in the house)
this guy is picky as hell about clocks
Aside: I mostly chose what to read when someone else who I specifically think is cool (even if I don’t know them or w/e) says or posts that they like something and it has almost never let me down.
This one, for example, I picked up in December: https://twitter.com/ImJuneFacts/status/1606339706811097088
threading is getting fragile so I’m backing this out to the main thread: what I thought would be the fifth, sixth, or maybe seventh book of the year turned out to be my eight. Such is the tragic unpredictability of having a full shelf of in-progress and to-read nonsense.
Eighth book of the year: The Museum of Eterna’s Novel (The First Good Novel) by Macedonio Fernández ( https://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/2010/12/01/museum-of-eternas-novel-the-first-good-novel/)
The Rochester “Three Percent” review closes with a lovely summary.
made a 16" NY-style pizza last night in the Ooni
it looks a lot better than it was!
warms the cockles of my bureaucratic heart to see a team of competent workers swoop in, protect other workers, and prevent losses for debtors (while realizing losses for risk takers): this must be what it feels like to “send in the troops”
happy friday
silly nonsense update, i’ve completed the seventy or eighty prologues to The Museum of Eterna’s Novel (The First Good Novel) by Macedonio Fernández and would like to congratulate myself for not posting out of context paragraphs of it this entire time like this one, which it is full of. now to start the novel itself
one of the guitarists I Patreon, Mr. Tabs, just did post of Weezer’s Buddy Holly and the video they produced for it ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAMDhuL2TUw&t=9s) has a killer opening for 90s kids
The post on their site: http://www.mrtabs.com/guitar-tab/weezer-buddy-holly/
seventh book: “Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters” by Richard P. Rumelt.
Read this one for work and had a few people I’m “doing strategy” at work with read it too. They generally like it a lot so far.
I’m a big hater of most business (generally: airport) books full of hindsight, anecdote cherry picking and etc. This one has all of those things, but reads more like a memoir, which helps a lot. Anyway, I finished it. Parts were good, even.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11721966-good-strategy-bad-strategy
changelog.txt
Pedagogy of the Homophone
Last night I captured a time lapse video of about 8 hours of our red and green prayer plants (9:30PM to 5:30AM) finishing their evening stretches and then relaxing into morning, as they do most days.
I think it turned out kinda neat.
zambo zambo zambo com https://youtu.be/j5pmb707LXc
BREAKING In a move decried by the SF BOS (pejorative), SFPD had been authorized by Mayor London Breed to hire Superman and equip him with a light saber.
apparently there are real hardy types who consider it just a hotel who would rather be in a tent or something but i would love to be snowed in at the ahwanee rn while the entire valley is snowed in, by that fireplace
i’m at the combination hair growing out selfie / “i guess i’m a large size shirt now” selfie/ lol at this shirt which i like to read as both for and against drinking post
what if
muni buses seat sooooo many people and muni bus shelters seat one, maybe two people. every muni stop should be as big as that one 22 stop in the filmore.
realized my “it’s still there” gag about Bernal Heights generally could have been read as if I had anything to do w/ the (cool) antifa cycling club sticker in one of my photos. Nope, I’ve got nothing to do with that.
I was just joking about Bernal Heights generally still being there. Anywhay, here’s another picture. OK, cya.
I read volume one+ when I bought this five years ago*: Rocannon’s World, Planet of Exile, City of Illusions, The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, as well as The Word for World Is Forest. Thanks for the suggestion all those years ago @InclinedPlane!
sixth book: volume two of Ursula K. Le Guin’s two volume collection, The Hainish Novels and Stories. ( https://www.ursulakleguin.com/hainish-novels-and-stories )
I’ve been working my way through the stories in the second volume for years, picking it off my to-read pile now and again. This weekend I read the Five Ways to Forgiveness cycle and am about half way through The Telling, which has me enthralled, so I’m calling this one done early.
Strongest possible endorsement for the entire collection.
( https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/33533489-the-hainish-novels-and-stories)
fifth book: took a break from all the serious stuff I’m reading to get and read Kitchen Confidential this week. Never read any of his stuff, but it turns out Bourdain’s writing on Parts Unknown is in exactly the same voice, so it was practically an audio book to read.
( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33313.Kitchen_Confidential)
bonus ride photo, cool new bike sticker
rode up to bernal and then carried my bike to the top, it’s still there, great work everyone, thanks so much
in my building, it’s x-mas all year round, thank you
cheap trick lookin’ work fit
air puppets make great roommates so long as they save rent money between giant blowout sales you wouldn’t believe because they really keep to themselves and only need a window
wierdly half squatting off the bench and then dropping back down to get the last rep from almost there to there on an arnold press is actually good form in a reverse-jerk technique i just invented, tyvm
“the only genuine way to practice futurism is to put it off for later” -mid paragraph pith from fernández
intrusive thought: location, market based returns on capital
reading a business book about strategy that describes DEC’s downfall as a failure to focus on a single coherent strategy amongst 1) selling computers (boxes) 2) silicon fab (chips) or 3) consulting (solutions) and with hindsight I think we can all agree that it was 1a) selling colorful computers that looked really cool*
*this poster is too young to have ever seen one not in a museum much less used one
13 years living in SF and 3 years into only ever sitting outside at places to eat and/or drink and I still under-dress and then sit facing the winer sun as if it ever helps
I don’t know many Verlaine stories but this one on Pushing Ahead of the Dame about Bowie’s cover of “Kingdom Come” on Scary Monsters has stuck with me since it was posted (there’s a similar story about Jimmy Page in the early 80s spending most of an invite on wah pedal battery fussing and not really laying anything down): everybody has off days.
lol at this weird 😘 vehicle the everloving wife made with jr this morning
I can fix “the mastodon community”
gm2u 😘
a Jacobin essay about how MILF Manor is really about abolition of the family
fifth, sixth, and seventh books are none of them page turners, so they are all in an indeterminate race, although this silly nonsense is a likely winner: The Museum of Eterna’s Novel (The First Good Novel)
by Macedonio Fernández ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6554891)
lemon n’ lime dogs
h/t https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F-IHvF5OCA of course
plates, and jousts
can we couple them?
hell yeah we can
wanna know how? get this
proprietary to macmillan
only us
ready?
[lays off 10,000 people because a competitor just did]
in addition to the music, david crosby was a poster’s poster, rip
finally figured out no-handing on the cargo bike: simply allow the tires to run a little low, simple as.
I’d been maintaining it like my commuter bike at max recommended pressure (60PSI I think), but at 40, the ride is a lot smoother and no-handing is easy.
Yay!
fourth book, “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage”, Haruki Murakami
I’ve had this on the shelf for a while (years, even) after catching up on Murakami and taking a good long break (furthermore, I think this was a gift, or used rack sale find, even) because it’s all very samesy. I picked this off the to-read pile because it looked the shortest.
I think crit of his lesser stuff like this is totally on the mark and fair but also “it me” so, I enjoyed it.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41022133-colorless-tsukuru-tazaki-and-his-years-of-pilgrimage
third book, “The Stories of your Life and others”, Ted Chiang.
Cheating because I read the first half last year. I got another copy after leaving my first copy on a plane ( https://mastodon.social/@gravely/109372422129728908).
I hope whoever found my first copy enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed my second copy.
“let’s take one idea seriously and see what happens”
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/223380.Stories_of_Your_Life_and_Others
ok, what the letters spells out is p easy to find on tvtropes[.]org which I’m told is a terrible website that’ll rot your brain and your ability to perceive art as anything but strings of gimmicks (they probably have a name for people like me who believe this), so I guess if you look for it the right way, like I did, the answer is in the google preview (remember when things were like that?) and you don’t have to click through.
but I’m also not gonna say what it is either, just read the book.
second book down, the new Jason Pargin (f. k. a. David Wong), “If This Book Exists, You’re in the Wrong Universe.” It was fun! I lol’d a few times, didn’t want to put it down, etc.
Jason put a tiny house of leaves gimmick in it (it’s full of metafiction shit tbh) but I only noticed it was happening for the last word so if you read it, let me know what it says (I’m going to go cheat and google it right now).
first book of the year down, (I think via @leigh somewhere?): “Axiomatic,” a collection of Greg Egan’s short stories that appeared in various science fiction magazines (mostly Interzone and Asimov’s) between 1989 and 1992.
Great late 80s hard SF shorts
I don’t do star reviews, but, folks, they’re good stories
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/156783.Axiomatic
aside: a characters is mentioned to have received their advanced degree in 2023, which I’m sure felt reasonably far out at the time.
it’s bowie’s birthday ◻️
lets all agree to call the FTC ruling invalidating non-competes a “Right to Work” rule
26th near valencia
does the fact that I got out a 6’ ladder and traversed the wall between our units to clear out the neighbor’s clogged patio drains ahead of tomorrow (they are out of town) absolve me of putting our christmas tree out on the sidewalk tonight (which to be clear I haven’t done yet) where it will surely float away in the storm tomorrow and disrupt commerce on Valencia St or nah?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF46NnUn5nw posting on the 'don theme song (“beep” is what QTs are gonna be called in the new beta)
i have over six hundreds mutes in tweetbot, muting quote tweets here will be easy for me, now to go mute the word “quote” itself and get started on that
