Finished reading: Horror Stories: A Memoir by Liz Phair 📚

If you were expecting a linear memoir Liz Phair, or “here’s what happened the night I wrote ‘Flower,’ you’re going to be a bit disappointed. Phair abandons the linear format that plagues many otherwise interesting memoirs and instead presents a series of stories that seek to answer the question “why are you like this?”

She’s always direct, never pulling punches, even when she’s shining a light on her own behavior. She never apologizes, but rather presents her truth and leaves interpretation up to the reader.

Being a huge fan of her discography isn’t required to enjoy this book; in fact, she devotes vanishingly few pages to it. Most of the musical discussion that is present in the book focuses on the aftermath of her 2003 self-titled record, and how exhausting and uncomfortable her brush with pop stardom felt for her. It never comes off as pity-seeking, but rather “these were the consequences of choices I made.”

If sea levels increase a little under 2 feet by 2100, Delaware (the nation’s lowest-lying state) will lose roughly 8% of its land area, including nearly all of the state’s protected wetlands.

🔗 What Does Climate Change Look Like in Delaware?

I never bothered to make a Best of 2019 music list, which is something I’ve done since my teenaged years, but I did make a “best beers I had for the first time in 2019” list, so there’s that.

After decades of advancements in semantic markup and accessibility, Instagram decided that we should consume all content as flat, inaccessible images via Stories and we just… went along with it.

The very structure of American life has changed to make the basics of stability difficult to attain, down to something as simple as eating with your partner or child…The problem of dinner is far larger than what you’re going to eat.

🔗 Dinner in America: Who Has the Time to Cook? - The Atlantic

Haven’t watched anything yet, but my first impression of Disney+ is that every single other streaming platform needs to copy how D+ handles login on Apple TV.

This new Sturgill Simpson record is the sound of an artist just straight-up Going For It on every single song. It has no chill whatsoever, and I mean that in the best possible way. I think I love it.

Anyone who insists Apple is “now a services company” has never logged in to iCloud•com.

I somehow found the spot in YouTube TV that allows me to record all college football games with one click. I am drunk with power.

Actually, it’s fine that my rMBP battery percentage indicator decrements even when it’s plugged in. It’s fine and good.

Finished reading: How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell 📚

A few thoughts:

  • The “doing nothing” in the title isn’t just chilling, or conspicuous, performative self-care. It’s deeper and more profound than that, in a way I was not totally prepared for.

  • I was also not preparedness all for the academic rigor, complete with a web of primary sources. This is a substantial book.

  • (There is something somewhat ironic about reading this on vacation, as the author stresses the value of “resisting in place.”)

  • I’ve also been rereading “Franny and Zoey” on the beach (for the hundredth time, perhaps) and I keep coming back to this quote from Salinger, a quote so large I want to live inside it:

“There’s a marvelous peace in not publishing, there’s a stillness. When you publish, the world thinks you owe something. If you don’t publish, they don’t know what you’re doing. You can keep it for yourself.”

Anyway, I really want to think about this ideas that this book is posing. Like, really think deeply about them. And I get the irony of posting half-baked thoughts about this book, but this is maybe just part of my process of thinking now… And maybe that’s why I needed this book so badly.

Front cover of “How To Do Nothing” by Jennifer Odell

Working on it.

The vacation house has Yahtzee… but no score sheets. Downloaded a score sheet to my iPad Mini, opened it in Notes and am keeping score with the Pencil. I am living in an Apple commercial.

“This is some really nice music… if you’re old.”

— Yung Stunna on John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme.

One of the things I miss the most about The Old Web: pages like this. One person or group of people curating a list of fan-submitted guitar tabs for a given band. So much love, passion and thoughtfulness in one place.

I’m working on building and tracking some small habits that will bring me joy and better mental health. One of the things I’m tracking is “play the guitar for at least ten minutes a day.” I’m up to 8 days in a row for the first times since… my 20s? my teens?

Please join me on the new Mastodon instance I just spun up, hejira.is, a place for like-minded individuals to beatifically discuss their appreciation of Joni Mitchell’s 1976 masterpiece.

Dropped into my local record store around lunchtime. Clerk saw me, walked over and said “Dude, I have a truckload of new, super clean 80s indie and alternative in, but that copy of ‘Green’ I posted on Insta last night just walked out the door.”

I feel very Seen. It feels good.

Listening to the audiobook of Insanely Simple, in which author Ken Segall relays a story about Steve Jobs proudly demoing a “with special offers” version of OS 9 that would ship with a 60-second startup commercial, along with other ads throughout the OS.

I’m going to maybe spend the rest of the day thinking about this alternate timeline.

High-top sneakers with light-up soles being charged via USB port

Currently charging my son’s shoes via USB for his first day of school because that’s a thing you do in 2018.