A California Yankee in King Cake's Court

I finally got around to listening to Slowdive's new-ish album everything is alive. (Neither the album title nor the song titles have capitalization for some reason.) I didn't love it. I don't expect them to keep making the same kind of music as they did when they were 20, but this was a little too "sad bastard music" for my taste. I thought their self-titled 2017 album was a better "the same but different" shoegaze album.

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I requested the last few days of October/first few days of November off from work, so now I'm thinking of what I actually want to do with them. The condo still hasn't sold--stymied no doubt by the fact that a dozen other units in the building are also on the market--and I could use it again. But I'm not wild about that idea; when I went in May it felt in my head like a farewell tour. That's just my stupid brain, and there's absolutely no reason why I couldn't use it again, but eh.

I poked around on Airbnb for a good chunk of yesterday afternoon and of all the possible destinations, Galveston seems, weirdly, to be the most affordable. I mean spending 3 or 4 nights in Natchez or even Natchitoches would be substantially more expensive. Maybe it's just because Galveston is a beach town and you can't get more off-season than that week.

I spent a week in Galveston in October of 2016 and lately I've found myself thinking about it a lot. The place I stayed, which is a less-than-5-minute walk from Seawall Beach, is still listed on Airbnb.

I mentioned this on Threads, with one of the photos I took during that past visit, and immediately got a comment accusing me of supporting drowning migrants and killing women with abortion bans.

*sigh*

Louisiana has a "democratic" governor who signed an abortion ban. Kevin McCarthy represents a district in California. Politics is more complicated than "blue state good, red state bad", but most people don't want to confront hard and complex ideas, especially not on social media. They just want that self-righteous, smug dopamine hit.

Anyway, I had about 80 followers on Twitter and so far on Threads I have more than 3,200, so I can afford to block a few stupid assholes.

Another idea is the LA-1 road trip I've been thinking of. LA-1 goes diagonally across the state, from Shreveport in the northwest corner all the way down to Grand Isle in the southeast. You could do it in one day, but I've always thought it would be fun to stretch it over 2 or 3.

However, a large point of that particular road trip would be photographing the weird small towns the highway goes through, so it would probably be better to do it in the spring. Louisiana, alas, is not particularly visually interesting in the fall, at least not the bottom half of the state. We don't really have the kind of foliage that turns interesting colors here, it's more like the green slowly leaches out of the landscape until everything is a very dull greyish-brown.

Spring, however, is like a Van Gogh painting on acid.

Option 3 is finally going to Poverty Point, although that's not really something I'd need multiple days for. Probably that would be a 2-night stay at the most.

My redneck neighbors must have bought out an entire fireworks stand. They started setting them off on July 1st and were still at it last night, so who knows when it's going to stop. At least they're knocking it off at a reasonable hour (about 10:30) and not setting them off until dawn.

Penny isn't particularly bothered by them; like she definitely notices them, but doesn't really react to them. Which is funny, because in all other respects she's a typical little dog and will bark incessantly at every other noise. If I walk into the room carrying something in a plastic bag, the slight noise of crinkling plastic will set off a volley of barks, even if she's looking right at me and knows the noise is coming from me.

I was never much of a fan of July 4th even before this country turned into a mean, ignorant Dumbfuckistan parody of itself, so unless you count day-drinking I didn't do shit to mark it. I'd say I wish we'd lost the revolution, but Great Britain doesn't seem to be doing a whole lot better these days. They have fewer mass shootings I guess, but what country doesn't.

Mom marked it with her usual celebration: Watching a vapid concert on CNN, in which she didn't like or could even identify 98% of the music, just to watch a band she does know perform like, 2 songs. While complaining about everyone's tattoos, and acting like she's the first crabby old white lady to realize "rap" rhymes with "crap".

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Well, Saturday was the first day the alleged state ban against delta 8 and even CBD gummies went into effect. I've since gotten an email from Aromatic Infusions informing me that they just restocked their CBD gummies, and the dispensary I drive past on my commute still has their WE SELL DELTA 8 THC EDIBLES banner out, so it looks like I was right to be skeptical of that panicked email from Troposphere Vapes.

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Is anyone using Threads? I'm still on the Bluesky wait list; story of my life, just not cool enough for the shiny new thing. But I'm skeptical about signing up for yet another Meta-owned social media thing. Plus I've heard you can't delete it without also deleting your Instagram account.

I don't know why it even matters, it's not like I was ever a heavy Twitter user. I know scientists and journalists really like Twitter and find it useful, but outside of those areas it's mostly for people who want to "build their brand", and that's just not something I've ever wanted to do or been any good at. I think that's why it was comforting to come back to eljay, because there's not a lot of people left here anyway, so there's less pressure to be performative and chase interaction.

I pretty much only use Twitter to post reviews of Binoid products so I can get discounts on future orders, and to tell Ted Cruz that he sucks.

Hey, you. Did you know, according to very serious intellectuals, that you only voted for Joe Biden not because you thought the country and you personally probably wouldn't survive another Trump term, but because washed-up Boomer and occasional actor James Woods wasn't allowed to jam a stolen photo of Hunter Biden's dong into your Twitter feed? It's true! according to people who voluntarily gave themselves the moniker "the intellectual dark web", as opposed to having it foisted on them by a mean high school girl as her boyfriend was shoving them into a locker.

Anyway, this is obviously a violation of Woods' rights under the First Amendment and a problem for all Americans!

*sarcastic jerk-off motions*

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This week's Sucreabeille perfume sample, chosen at random from a big jar of them, is Sillage de la Sarigue, which is an homage to Marie Antoinette's famous perfume but I guess if she went on a bender at the Petit Trianon and brought all the livestock indoors to party with her. Lots of stinky animalic musk underneath the pretty florals.

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A co-worker gave me a silk scarf that a Chinese vendor sent with some samples. I duly reported it to HR so as not to run afoul of my employer's gift policy. I really hope they let me keep it, because orange is my color.


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And I recently passed 500 Spanish lessons in a row with Duolingo. Hola, Uruguay. ¿Puedo por favor ir a vivir contigo? Odio este lugar y quiero marijuana legales.

My mother collects Hull pottery in the water lily pattern. Actually, I don't think it's accurate to say she "collects" it, because except for her first piece, a vase that belonged to her grandmother, I've bought her all of the pieces. I love antique stores and I not infrequently come across pieces, so I'll usually buy them for birthday or Christmas presents.

I've always aspired to collect Roseville pottery in the pinecone pattern, but that's much harder to come by, and the one time I bought a piece it was a total farce. I paid about $200 for a bowl, I'm pretty sure it was this one:


I sat down on a bench right outside of the antiques store, put the bowl on the bench next to me, where it promptly rolled off, because I had failed to notice the bench curved downward, and smashed on the sidewalk. They'd wrapped it in newspaper, but that wasn't any protection against it hurtling onto cement.

I mention this because imagine I'd done that 220 million times, and you'd have a pretty good metaphor for Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter.

Phil is still in the hospital. On Sunday they used a camera to find out what was going on with his bladder, because even though he's been on a catheter he's still having trouble passing urine, and there's been blood in it.

Turns out his enlarged prostate is blocking it, so they put in a stent that will hopefully help. They also did a biopsy; no one really thinks he has prostate cancer, it's been enlarged for years (all men get that if they live to be old enough) and he's been pretty continuously monitored for prostate cancer. But it would be negligent not to double check.

In other/lighter news, on a Houston/LAX flight earlier this month someone apparently hacked into the plane's PA system and spent the flight time periodically issuing weird moans through it, and no one knows how it happened or who it was. That would have been just a "huh, okay" story, were it not for the video shot by a film producer while it was happening.

@emersoncollins1

Weirdest. Flight. EVER!

♬ original sound - Emerson Collins

I'm gonna need Emerson Collins to provide real-time updates on more things please, for all our mental health.

I think he also put the video on Twitter, but I can't show you that now because I've been locked out of my account for harassing Newt Gingrich:



For context, he was questioning John Fetterman's tattoos in the most hilarious old balls geezer dork way. "Are they a reference to his GANG AFFILIATION with the CRIPS or to the DRUG SONG about HEROIN???"

If you had told me when I was 20 that Newt Gingrich would still be around when I was nearly 50, I think I would have gone full Ted Kaczynski. (The living off the grid part, not the mailing bombs to people part.)