Isolation Report, Week #35

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

Well, election day here in the US is finally behind us.  It was quite a stressful time, even though things played out almost exactly as was predicted.  Oh, sure, people are belly-aching about the polls being wrong, but all the polls said was that there was a 90% chance that Biden would win, and he did.  The polls never claimed it wouldn’t be a close race.  We read that into the polls.  We humans are shitty at understanding probabilities, and somehow we imagine that 90% means it’ll be a walk in the park, when all it really means is that, if you do it 10 times, you’ll only lose once.  And everything else was spot on: that the count would take several days to complete, that we wouldn’t know the winner right away or for days, that Trump would be ahead on the night of, and that Biden would close the gap as more and more mail-in ballots were counted.  All of that happened exactly like pretty much everyone said it would ... but, I gotta tell ya: there’s a big difference between intellectually accepting those things to be true and living through them.  Even though every single event happened exactly as predicted, we still sat around biting our nails, unsure of how it would all come out.  Blame 2016 for that: our capacity to dare to hope has been severely curtailed.  But now that phase is over: Biden won the popular vote, as almost everyone knew he would, and he even won the electoral college, as most said he would, but it was a nail-biter all the same.  Next up: can he win all the court cases?  And, assuming he does so, can he successfully evict Trump from the White House?  Neither of those is assured, although I think he has a pretty good shot at the second one if he can manage the first.

Trump (and/or his people) have done an amazing job of setting up the Supreme Court to support him in whatever cockamamie case he brings to have the election overturned.  Right now there are 6 conservative justices and only 3 liberal ones (and all the moderates have been skillfully excised).  If such a case comes before the current court, I think we can absolutely count on the 3 liberals (Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan) to vote against such a thing, and I think we can count on the two most recent Trump disasters—being, as they are, utterly unqualified to do much of anything else—to vote for him, and we can probably also throw in Thomas, who never met an argument he couldn’t settle in favor of the most right-leaning option he could find.  That leaves Chief Justice Roberts, Alito, and Gorsuch (the first Trump nomination).  Two of those three would have to vote to do the right thing, and, while all 3 are conservative, all 3 are also known for breaking ranks on some important issues: none of them are puppets, in other words.  So there’s a decent shot.

Then the trick will be to attempt to undo all the damage that Trump has caused, and I’m of mixed emotions about the ability of Biden and his team to accompllish that.  In case I’ve not been clear, I’m mostly liberal, and almost entirely progressive, but I am not a Democrat.  The Democrats are exactly half of what’s wrong with the American political system, and I have very little faith in their desire to effect real change, much less their ability to do so.  It’s looking more and more like they will not have the Senate on their side to do that either, and that makes it all the more up in the air.  Best case scenario we end up with a perfectly split Senate, which means Kamala gets to cast any tie-breaking votes, but that’s only if everyone votes along strict party lines, which, you know, they don’t, always.  There are several Democrats who are way more conservative than the majority, and a few Republicans who are more liberal than the majority.  One senator could conceivably hold up legislation for everyone if they demand something extra for their state, or just need to get their ego stroked.

So it’s by no means a sure thing that anythihng useful (much less exciting) will get done.  But at least it (probably) won’t get worse, which is the main thing I feared from a Trump re-election.  I said in a Facebook post, and I will repeat it here: people crying doom and destruction over Biden becoming president are only guessing at what he’ll do, or in some cases (but not that many) assuming that he will do what he says he will.  In neither case are they likely correct.  On the other hand, we already seen what Trump will do.  The damage is pretty bad: the environment has suffered setbacks that my children will have to deal with for years, the education system, park system, and post office will likely take years if not decades to recover, and, mostly significantly, the Supreme Court is now poised to take away my children’s rights to reproductive freedom, marriage equality, and employment protections.  These are not things I think Trump may do ... this is what he’s done thus far.  And, with Bill Barr behind him, telling him that Article II of the Constitution says he can do whatever he likes, it’s not like it would have gotten any better.  So I’m happy Trump lost and probably—hopefully—won’t be President again, but I can’t say I’m all that thrilled that Biden won.

My birthday was two days after election day, and my father called me supposedly to wish me a happy birthday.  But mostly just to yell at me for supporting the socialist takeover of our country.  The most amusing part of the call was when he called me out for not knowing what the Democratic platform was.  I responded by asking him if he knew what the Republican platform was.  “We’re not talking about the Republicans!” he hedged.

Of course, it’s not particularly surprising that my father knew the Democratic platform but not the Republican one, nor that I knew the Republican one but not the Democratic one.  Because my father didn’t really vote for Trump (who he describes as “an idiot”): he was just voting against Biden.  Likewise, I was voting against Trump (naturally), but I didn’t even have to vote for Biden: since I live in California, I had the luxury of voting for whoever I thought would actually do the best job.  I voted for the Green Party candidate, whose name I didn’t even know before I received my ballot (and didn’t bother to retain after filling it in).  I considered the Libertarian fellow as well, but I actually did read the platforms of all the third party candidates, and the Green Party sounded the most like my own views, so that’s who I voted for.  Of course, the majority of Americans think that a vote for anything other than a Democrat or a Republican is a “wasted vote” ... the Democrats and Republicans have worked together quite effectively to make us all believe that.  And, since we all believe it, it’s true.  So, if I lived in Ohio or Florida or Pennsylvania or Michigan, I would likely have a much tougher choice, but there are some advantages to living in a state where the color on the news maps is known well before the election even starts.  So my father and I voted against rather than voting for, and that’s fine.

My dad tried to explain to me why electing Biden was so bad.  But, other than the obvious assertion that he might die and then “that woman” would be President (oh, the horror!), the best he could come up with was that Biden was going to get rid of the oil companies.  This, of course, is hilarious for a number of reasons:

• It presumes that I believe Biden has enough balls to actually try to take on the oil industry, which I absolutely do not.
• It presumes that, even if he wanted to, he would somehow, as President, have the power to abolish the oil industry, which of course he would not.
• Most ridiculously of all, it presumes that I would have some sort of problem with getting rid of the oil industry.  Being as they are responsible for raking in billions of dollars in profts while paying no taxes (often actually receiving money from the government instead), that they are the primary polluters of the planet, and that they have worked tirelessly to retard our growth into more energy efficient industries (such as by killing the electric car), I would be more likely to dance on the oil industry’s grave than mourn its passing.  But somehow my father missed this memo.

But of course mostly that’s just a smokescreen for my father’s fear that a strong, liberal black woman from California (which is at least four strikes against her in his book) might be President someday.  I sincerely doubt he’s alone in this viewpoint either.  The racists (and sexists, and homophobes, and xenophobes—my father is all of those and more) have been much more comfortable showing themselves over the last 4 years, and I’m sure they’re not looking forward to having to crawl back into their holes again.  Many of them won’t.  And, I know that eventually most of these idiots will die and their minority will actually be small enough to ignore, finally, but it seems to be taking a really long time, and I’m sort of losing my patience.

If Biden does step down for health reasons at some point, Kamala becoming President could be quite a good thing.  I certainly have more faith in her than him for at least trying to get some big changes accomplished.  But I’m not holding my breath.  For the most part, things will go on as they always have ... well, as they used to back in the days before Trump anyway.  Sadly, right now that seems pretty nice.  I hope that doesn’t continue to be the case, because “business as usual” was already pretty shitty, as the continuing instances of police brutality continue to demonstrate, in shocking and tragic ways.  But I guess I can be happy that, while I’m not holding my breath for any real change, I’m no longer holding my breath that we might descend into further chaos either.  It was not particularly pleasant having to hold one’s breath from Tuesday until Saturday, but at least now it’s over.

Probably.

Bleeding Salvador II

"Happy and Dopey and Dirty in Places"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.  You may also want to check out the first volume in this multi-volume mix for more info on its theme.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

Sometimes second volumes are just part two of the initial mix development of the mix, when I just had way too many ideas to all fit on one volume.¹  Sometimes the first volume was going to be the only volume, so volume II is breaking all new ground.²  Of course, sometimes a mix is right in the middle: with Bleeding Salvador, I had a few tracks left over after volume I, but certainly not enough to make a whole volume II.  So it took a while to accumulate more great tracks with weird, surreal lyrics, but I finally got there.

Returning artists from last volume include the Beautiful South, whose “Woman in the Wall” was our original mix starter, the Cramps, and They Might Be Giants.  The Beautiful South returns with “From Under the Covers,” a lighter tune but still with some great imagery; the Cramps’ “Human Fly” isn’t quite the powerhouse “Goo Goo Muck” was, but still some great lines—e.g. “I got 96 tears in 96 eyes”—and TMBG once again gives us two great tracks: “Boat of Car” and “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Clothes.” They’re both short, so I figured you could handle two.  Especially when they contain such gems as this:

All the people are so happy now
Their heads are cavin’ in;
I’m glad they are a snowman with
Protective rubber skin.

And of course King Missile’s “Part Two” was always going to appear here; the joke on The Way to Salvation was that half the story of “The Boy Who Ate Lasagna and Could Jump Over a Church” appeared on side 1, and you had to wait till side 2 to hear the conclusion.  But I went a step farther and made you wait till volume II to get it.

I felt it very appropriate to kick off this volume of surreal lyrics with perhaps the greatest WTF song of all time: “Hotel California,” by the Eagles.³  The individual members of the Eagles have been asked many times over the past nearly-fifty years what the lyrics of this song actually mean, but all the answers can probably be boiled down to “we were on a lot of drugs back then.” Drugs were likely a factor in our closer as well, although to imagine that Jim Morrison was no more than the sum of all the drugs he consumed would be dangerously short-sighted in my view.  Both “Hotel California” and “Riders on the Storm” have been subject to all sorts of interpretations throughout the years, and they illustrate some of the best characteristics that surreal lyrics can offer.  Different people will always get different things out of them, and be convinced that they “definitely” mean this or that, but you can also just turn your brain off and enjoy them thoroughly without trying to figure them out.

Continuing through the seventies, “The Fat Lady of Limbourg” was pretty damned weird when Brian Eno included it on his second solo album in 1974.⁴  Shivaree’s version, coming along some 30-odd years later, is both less and more strange simultaneously, being a bit more melodic, but also throwing in more random sound effects and giving the whole thing even more of a patina of Twilight Zone (aided immensely by Eno’s lyrics, of course).  A 70s original, Squeeze’s “Cool for Cats” is just an exercise in double entendre and other clever language.  Sung by Chris Difford⁵ in full cockney accent, the lyrics are full of allusions to rhyming slang, old English TV shows, and other Londonisms; it’s probably only truly surreal for us Americans.

Our volume title also comes from the seventies: specifically, 1979, when half of the remnants of 10cc, now renamed Godley & Creme, put out their third studio album, including the ultra-weird opener “An Englishman in New York.”⁶  I know of no other song which so thoroughly embodies the classic line from Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead: “half of what he said meant something else, and the other half didn’t mean anything at all.” Is there deeper meaning in Godley’s disturbingly detailed description of a “crucifix clock” in which “two miniature Romans, running on rails, appear every hour and bang in the nails”? how about ”‘Ode to a Burger’ by Keats at his worst”? or “shhh, Howard Johnson is moving his bowels”?  Much like the volume title, most of this song seems like it must mean ... something.  But, what that might be, you really have no idea.

As for other obvious candidates, I’ve always had a soft spot for Michael Penn’s “Brave New World” ever since I first heard it (mostly likely on the Saturday Night Live episode that his brother Sean was hosting).  Besides containing great, bizarre lyrics like this:

Buster and his company look good in black;
They’re looking for a way out of the cul-de-sac:
Tearing through the phone book and the almanac,
They all have dusty noses ’cause they sniff shellack.

it also appeals to the poetry nerd in me for the feat of rhyming across the bridges.⁷  R.E.M.‘s “Swan Swan H” was another obvious choice, starting as it does with “Swan, swan, humminbird, hurrah.  We are all free now.  What noisy cats are we.”⁸  Jane’s Addiction is another band who often uses challenging imagery, though often it’s so buried in hard rockin’ tunes that you don’t notice.  I’ve always loved the spare, stripped-down sound of “Summertime Rolls,” where the opening imagery of falling into a “sea of grass” while children run over you is particularly evocative (another great line is “her nose is painted pepper sunlight”).  I even stole the grass image for a story I wrote once.⁹  Other personal favorites that just had to end up here include “The Morning” by the Call (“I am standing at the edge of my mind; if I look in, I might fall in”) and “Stuart” by the Dead Milkmen (“Jumpin’ Jesus on a pogo stick! Everybody knows the burrow owl lives in a hole in the ground! Why the hell do you think they call it a burrow owl, anyway!?”).  The former is a convoluted song of longing; the latter is a sometimes difficult look at small-minded small-town intolerance that still manages to be funny at times.

Bleeding Salvador II
[ Happy and Dopey and Dirty in Places ]

“Hotel California” by Eagles, off Hotel California
“The Fat Lady of Limbourg” by Shivaree, off Who's Got Trouble?
“Boat of Car” by They Might Be Giants, off They Might Be Giants
“From Under the Covers” by the Beautiful South, off Welcome to the Beautiful South
“An Englishman in New York” by Godley & Creme [Single]
“Cool for Cats” by Squeeze, off Singles: 45's and Under [Compilation]
“The Morning” by the Call, off Reconciled
“Brave New World” by Michael Penn, off March
“Part Two” by King Missile, off The Way to Salvation
“Human Fly” by the Cramps, off Bad Music for Bad People [Compilation]
“Summertime Rolls” by Jane's Addiction, off Nothing's Shocking
“Swan Swan H” by R.E.M., off Lifes Rich Pageant
“Pagan Angel and a Borrowed Car” by Iron & Wine, off The Shepherd's Dog
“Nothing's Gonna Change My Clothes” by They Might Be Giants, off They Might Be Giants
“JD” by Mocean Worker, off Candygram for Mowo!
“Magic Alex” by the Red Sea Pedestrians, off See Through the Eyes of Osiris!
“Stuart” by the Dead Milkmen, off Beelzebubba
“Harvey” by the Electric Swing Circus, off The Electric Swing Circus
“Riders on the Storm” by the Doors, off L.A. Woman

Total:  19 tracks,  73:03

It’s probably not too much of a stretch to imagine we’d eventually see Iron & Wine here.  When we first saw him on Slithy Toves I, I pointed out that nearly all his songs have quite surreal lyrics; when he resurfaced on Slithy Toves II, I talked about his “juggernaut heart.” Here he gives us a “Pagan Angel and a Borrowed Car,” where he reports “I was still a beggar, shaking out my coat among the angry cemetery leaves.” No clue what this one is about, but it’s a beautfiul track.

My all time favorite transition on this mix is from Mocean Worker’s sort-of instrumental “JD” (which just barely missed being slotted onto Cantosphere Eversion) to “Magic Alex” by the Red Sea Pedestrians.  We first saw Mocean Worker (remember: “Mocean” rhymes with “ocean,” thus making the name a pun for “motion worker”) on Salsatic Vibrato V, where I pointed out that it was the moniker of the son of a jazz producer; the father’s initials are “JD,” which I suppose might be a coincidence, but then again probably not.  There aren’t really enough discernible words here to figure out what MW is trying to tell us, but it’s a trippy little bridge nonetheless.  And it flows surprisingly well into alt-klezmer folksters RSP, who here bring us a departure in “Magic Alex,” who they describe as “the Greek wizard of electric paint” and “a real rock gardener, the son of the secret police.” Of course, to be fair, this album (See Through the Eyes of Osiris!) is pretty much a departure from the more straight-ahead-folk of A Lesson in Cartography, which I discovered while searching for updated versions of “Willie the Weeper.”¹⁰  But “Magic Alex,” with its electronic, almost sci-fi, sound effects, is a departure from the departure.

Finally, the most unexpected track here is probably from the Electric Swing Circus, a band I discovered while searching for new (to me) electro-swing for Salsatic Vibrato.¹¹  So it doesn’t seem like they’d be a particularly good fit here, and honestly most of their output isn’t.  But then there’s ... “Harvey.”

If you ask people what the best classic black & white movie of all time is, I’m sure you’ll hear a lot of votes for Casablanca and Citizen Kane, and perhaps a few suggestions of African Queen or Rebecca or The Maltese Falcon or Psycho.  But, for me, it is and will always be Harvey.  Jimmy Stewart is certainly a talented actor, and you may prefer It’s a Wonderful Life or Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but for me, those all pale in comparison to Harvey.  Stewart has a mischeivous side that was rarely allowed full reign, but it gets just that in this lovely movie about a man who most consider simple, because he believes he’s constantly being accompanied by a 6’3” invisible rabbit.  The movie is named after the rabbit, not Stewart’s character, and that is significant.  The movie is heartwarming and funny and says a lot about how the “normal” people have a lot to learn from this eccentric man-child and his “imaginary” friend.  Now, there’s actually no indisputable evidence that ESC’s “Harvey” refers to the movie (or perhaps to the play on which it was based), but the fact that Harvey is referred to as a pooka and this beautiful refrain:

So, here’s to you, Harvey,
The weaver of dreams,
The stopper of clocks, the unpicker of seams.
Raise a glass to old Harvey,
Look him straight in the eye:
If you say you can’t see him, you’re living a lie lie lie ...

make it very clear, at least to me.  The idea of an overgrown invisible rabbit as the weaver of dreams, the stopper of clocks, and the unpicker of seams makes real an abstract magick in my brain that makes me relive my enjoyment of this classic film every time I hear it.

Next time we’ll return to the intersection of my music interests and my gaming interests.

⇐ Bleeding Salvador I

Bleeding Salvador III ⇒

__________

1 Prime examples of this would be Smokelit Flashback II and Salsatic Vibrato II.

2 We just saw an example of this last time in this series, with Wisty Mysteria II.

3 It almost made it on volume I, actually, but I felt it would have a bigger impact as the opener to a new volume.

4 This would be post-Roxy-Music, but pre-inventing-ambient.

5 One of only 3 Squeeze singles he sang, as it happens.

6 Not to be confused with the Sting song of the same name; Godley & Creme’s predates Sting’s by nearly a decade.

7 By which I mean, there are 3 verses and 3 bridges, and the first lines of every bridge rhyme with each other, but not with any other lines in the song.

8 And also being from the best R.E.M. album of all time, Lifes Rich Pageant.

9 Another fun fact: I once wrote an English paper in college contrasting the organic imagery and playing with grammar that Farrell and Stipe did in their music.

10 For the record, RSP’s version is pretty damned good.

11 As of this writing, we’re one volume away from seeing ESC on that mix, but we shall get there in the fullness of time, I’m sure.

Isolation Report, Week #33

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

Another two weeks gone in this seemingly endless pandemic, but of course it still doesn’t feel like we’re any closer to ... anything.  Honestly, even though the election will be done in another two weeks, it doesn’t feel like much of an accomplishment.  In the first place, two weeks these days can easily last two years, and, in the second place, the chances that we actually know who’s won on Election Night are so fucking slim that it doesn’t matter anyway.  I don’t give a shit: I’ve already voted.  It’s all waiting to see how it comes out in the wash for me at this point.

Today, I’ll give you thoughts on two things, one political, and one personal.  First, the political.

I’ve mostly been trying to ignore the whole Amy Coney Barrett thing: she’s going to get on the court no matter what happens in the hearings, so what’s the point in following them?  But I couldn’t help but hear about the moment where (Republican) John Cornyn asked her what she had been referring to during the hearing and she held up a blank notepad (to which Cornyn replied “impressive” ... because, you know, it takes a lot of effort to write nothing on a piece of paper).  This has been a source of many jokes, from both political camps: an unknown conservative described the blank page as a “list of Joe Biden’s accomplishments,” while comedian Kathy Griffin said it represented a “picture of his [Trump’s] brain scan.” What I haven’t heard anyone point out, though, is that a blank page is actually the perfect inspiration for Barrett’s “testimony”: it reminded her to keep her experssion entirely blank, her voice entirely neutral, and her statements entirely devoid of content.

And, honestly, it’s not even fair to pick on Barrett: any liberal judge in her position would do (as has done) the same.  Judges are full of opinions—it’s their fucking job description, for fuck’s sake—until you put them in front of Congress, and then all of a sudden they have no viewpoints on anything whatsoever.  There’s a metric shit-ton of “it wouldn’t be fair of me to talk about a case I might adjudicate one day” and “I have to keep an open mind until I hear the facts of such a case” and many other such empty platitudes.  So, if the point of Senate confirmation hearings is not to hear a judge’s opinions on the law, what the hell is the fucking point, anyway?

And we don’t have to stop there.  Over the past 4 years, we’ve seen and heard a whole fuck-ton of people “testifying” before Congress, and magically none of them remember any details about the stuff they’re supposed to be experts on, or the stuff they actually did themselves.  Sessions has appeared before Congress, and Dejoy has appeared before Congress, and Barr has appeared before Congress, and DeVos has appeared before Congress, and Mueller has appeared before Congress, and Zuckerberg has appeared before Congress, and can anyone name one single thing that has changed because of it?  It’s all pure theater at this point.

And then of course we have the debates ... it’s a fun little time where two people refuse to answer the questions they were actually asked or follow any of the “rules” set forth at the beginning.  At the end of the allotted time, you know absolutely nothing that you didn’t know going in, and all the “analysis” is centered around who flubbed a word or had a fucking fly on their head.  Let me be clear: the Democrats are not any better than the Republicans here.  I’ve often said that all answers in a debate—or even your average press conference—can be classified as one of 3 animals: a duck, a weasel, or a dead horse.  West Wing often gets accused of being “liberal porn,” but part of the reason it was so good was that even the Republicans on that show were better than the Democrats we have in real life.  Remember the episode in season 7 where Alan Alda’s character got his (Republican) campaign back on track by holding a press conference with the radical idea of just fucking answering all the reporters’ questions until they couldn’t think of any more?  When have you ever seen that done in real life?  Yeah, me neither.  And they wonder why we’d rather live in televsion land than in real life.

For the personal thing, I’ll let you know that this week I had my first, and quite possibly my only, colonoscopy.  I’ve told everyone I can think of that, if a doctor ever comes to me and says “you have to get another colonoscopy or you might die” I’m going to reply “let me think about it.” (And so I apologize if you’re one of the folks that had to hear that bon mot more than once.)  Now, if you don’t know what a colonoscopy is, it’s where they jam a camera on a tube up your ass and see how far they can get it up there, taking pictures and whatnot as they go.  Now that sounds horrifying, but the truth is that they knock you out completely for this whole thing, so you don’t actually feel anything.  You just go to sleep, and then you wake up, and you’re a bit bloated because you’ve had some extra air injected into your guts, but basically it’s like nothing happened.

So why do I say I’ll never do it again?  Well, those of you who’ve had this procedure before already know the answer: it’s the prep.  See, the day before, you can’t have any solid food.  Which is not great, but not terrible either.  I mean, you can still have water, and coffee or tea, and fruit juice.  I mean, no milk or cream in your coffee or tea, and no pulpy fruit juice, just clear stuff like apple or white grape, but that’s not bad.  And you can have chicken broth, which is not super filling, but better than nothing.  And you can have Jello and popsicles and sports drinks like Gatorade or VitaminWater, but certain colors are out (presumably because of the dyes): no red, no blue, no green, no purple.  Now, one of the (many) medical people I talked to in preparation for this preparation described this as “only leaving the crappy flavors.” But, as it happens, I love orange, as a flavor at least, so drinking orange Vitaminwater and “eating” orange Jello all day was just fine by me (orange popsicles, as it turns out, were not as yummy as my nostalgia had portrayed them).  So, still: not great, but not awful either.  Then there’s the medicine.

The first problem with the medicine is that someone decided that it was so disgusting that they needed to make it taste like fruit.  Unfortunately, this just makes it taste like disgusting fruit, which is still not great.  You have to mix it yourself, and then you have to drink it, slowly, but finish all 16 ounces within 30 minutes.  Slightly oxymoronic, but okay.  And you do this 3 times over the course of the day.  And the function of this medicine is to make you shit your guts out.  Because, you know: they don’t want any yucky stuff on their nice camera that they’re going to jam up your ass.  So they want you to get it all out.  All of it.  So, fine: spending more time on the toilet than not for roughly 7 hours is not my idea of a fun time, but, you know what?  We have technology for that now.  My kids spend 7 hours on the toilet all the time: you just need a phone or a tablet or what-have-you and you’re set.  But here’s the problem: after a while, you’re done.  There is literally nothing more to expel.  Except you’re still drinking this nasty-tasting shit, which somehow manages to come out exaclty as fast as it went in, and it’s all so violent and ... I dunno, repetitive.  And you know how you get when you have diarrhea for even just an hour and you start trying to raid your kids’ diaper ointment?  Yeah, multiply that by 7.  A fun time, it was not.

On the other hand, I now know that I do not have any polyps, cancerous or otherwise, that I do have diverticula, which are the breeding ground for diverticulitis, and I have some lovely pictures of the inside of my guts.  I thought about sharing them with you, but my family discouraged me.  They seemed to think you wouldn’t find them as fascinating as I do.  Ah, well: your loss.

In any event, my next virus isolation report will be from the far side of the election, so perhaps things will look better then.  But, given 2020 thus far, I shall not be holding my breath.

Saladosity, Part 16: Mexican

[This is the sixteenth post in a long series.  You may wish to start at the beginning.  Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

(If you need a refresher about my salad-making lingo, go back and review our first salad.)

This is one of my all-time favorite salads.  It’s a little more of a pain to make, and I hadn’t made it in quite a while for that reason, but I returned to it recently and I fell in love all over again.  Admittedly I took a little shortcut this last time around, but I’ll point that out to you when we get there so that you can take it too, if you like.

The Protein

You have all sorts of options for protein here.  If you really want meat, your all-time best choice is whatever leftover taco meat you have from last night.  If you’re not prone to having any leftovers in that area, you might try taking a leftover chicken breast, dicing up part of it, applying a bit of taco seasoning (or chili powder, in a pinch), and heating it up for just a few seconds in the microwave.  If you’re really desperate and you simply must have meat, substitute canned chicken for the leftover chicken breast.

But you know what I’ve discovered?  It’s perfectly lovely without any meat at all.  Just use pistachios.  Now, you may say “but wait! pistachios aren’t Mexican!” No, in fact, pistachios are from the Middle East.  But they really do work here.  I don’t know that I can tell you why ... you’re just going to have to trust me on this one.  I will use leftover taco meat if it’s handy, and I’ve done the chicken thing a couple of times, but, honestly: pistachios are pretty damned good.  Sometimes better than meat.

Plus, you know, if you happen to subscribe to a vegetarian flavor of nutritional tribes, you don’t want the meat anyhow.  For paleo flavors, cashews are perfect.  I think the only reason to avoid the cashews would be if you’re allergic to them.  If so, first of all my condolences, but secondly, try the chicken.  It’s also a good call.

The Cheese

Obviously you want the shredded Mexican cheese blend that we talked about when we went shopping for meat and cheese.  If you’re being strict about the paleo and avoiding the dairy, you can omit the cheese and you won’t miss too much.  But I think it’s better with.

The Crunch

The go-to here would of course be crushed up tortilla chips.  But, whether Atkins or Whole30 or even Weight Watchers, corn chips are not considered an ideal choice for a healthy diet.  They’re grains, they’re carbs, and they add a decent chunk of calories.  So here’s where the plantain chips that we picked up when we went shopping for nuts come in.  Plantain chips are crappy for just eating straight out of the bag, but that should be considered a feature, not a bug.  What they’re great for is substituting:

• They make excellent “crackers”: have them with some cheese, or dip them in guacamole or hummus.
• They’re imperfect but surprisingly yummy nonetheless at playing the role of oats in granola.
• They’re not too shoddy at faking as potato chips, at least for culinary purposes.  Like on top of casseroles that called for crushed chips.
• They do a damned fine job as faux tortilla chips, if you crumble them up and put them on salads.

Just take a bag of plantain chips and beat it up a bit, then toss it into a zip-loc bag for maximum freshness.

The Dressing

What really gives this salad its kick is the guacamole dressing, and it is in fact the only salad where I’m going to recommend you use a “heavy” amount of dressing (which, remember, is defined as “more than you normally would”).  This dressing is so damn good, you’re just going to want a lot of it.

Now, the rough ingredients of the dressing are pretty basic: you need guacamole, sour cream, and some cilantro dressing.  The first two are pretty simple.

Remember that guacamole is one of the things we talked about when we went shopping for cold goods.  In our house, we’ve settled into a rhythm of buying those big boxes of Wholly Guacamole at Costco, tossing most of ’em into the freezer, and just rotating into the fridge as needed.  One container of that is the perfect amount for this dressing.  You could make guac fresh every time you wanted this salad ... but then you wouldn’t eat this salad that often, and that would be a shame.

Sour cream is sour cream.  One big spoonful should do it.  If you’re looking to avoid dairy, you could skip this part and it might be okay ... never tried it, personally.

The cilantro dressing is the only complicated part.  What I like to do when I’m feeling industrious is make my own.  Unlike having to make the guacamole part, this would something you do once a month or whatever, and then you just have it on hand every time.  I originally concocted my recipe (below) because my friendly neighborhood Trader Joe’s brand of cilantro dressing is heavy on the soybean oil, and I don’t like that.  Now, I’m going to be honest with you here: we’ve since discovered Primal, and they make a super yummy cilantro lime dressing—it’s not strictly Whole30 safe, but only because it contains (organic) honey, which ... c’mon: that’s a very small concession to make.  So use that if you don’t want to make your own.  But if you do want to try making it from scratch, just follow the directions below, and you won’t be disappointed.

Once you have the cilantro dressing, all you want to do is mix your guac and sour cream together in a bowl; it will be super-thick, so just drizzle in some cilantro dressing and stir, repeating until you get the consistency of a fairly thick dressing.  In my experience, if you get the consistency right, the taste will just automatically be perfect.

Cilantro Dressing

You’re going to need a food processor or blender for this one.  Pour in ⅓ of a cup of pepitas (those’re the roasted pumpkin seeds we bought when we went shopping for nuts), 2/3 of a cup of milk, ⅓ of a cup of oil (more on that in a sec), 2/4 of a cup of grated parmesan cheese, and ¼ of a cup of white wine vinegar.  (If you do it in the order I’ve suggested, and you do 2 ¼ cups for the parmesan instead of ½ cup, you’ll get by with only using 2 measuring cups and minimal mess.)

Which oil to use?  Well, use what you like, but I would try to avoid the “bad” oils like soybean, peanut, canola, or palm.  Avocado is amazing (that’s what Primal uses in theirs, for what it’s worth).  Grapeseed is also not bad.  I don’t think olive works well, taste-wise, but perhaps you feel differently.

Now add some chopped jalapeños.  I used to get them pre-chopped and canned from TJ’s, but then I started buying packages of fresh ones.  The fresh ones are more of pain, because you have to chop them yourself, and it is very easy to burn the crap out of yourself when learning to cut jalapeños, but eventually you get the hang of it, and one of those little packages of jalapeños is enough for 4 batches of this dressing (divie your choppped bits into 4 roughly equal piles, toss one in the blender, and freeze the other 3 for later).  But the canned is fine too.

Now you’re going to want to add about 5 cloves of garlic.  Feel free to substitute minced if you like; it’ll all end up that way in just a bit.

The last task of any complexity at all is to take a big bunch of cilantro (I typically use however much is in a Trader Joe’s pack of organic cilantro), separate out the stems, and toss the leaves in the blender.  We don’t need the stems for this recipe, but you can compost them, or perhaps you have an animal that might like them (our guinea pig always did).  Or, you know: just toss ’em.

Two heavy pinches of salt, 12 or so grinds of black pepper, and turn all that into a liquid.  Finally, remember that homemade mayo we made for our autumnal salad?  Make another batch, then immediately dump it into the blender.  This time, just pulse it a few times to mix it all together.  The resulting consistency should be a nice, viscous-but-not-thick liquid, which is perfect for some salads all on its own.  Also perfect for thinning out guacamole dressing while adding a whole bunch of flavor.

Mexican salad

Once again, you’re ready, and it’s just assembly.

• base veggies
• pistachios (or seasoned meat, if you prefer; slightly warm)
• crushed plantain chips
• shredded Mexican cheese
• guacamole dressing (heavy)

This one is a very hearty salad.  It’s got a nice crunch, but it’s really the smooth, creamy goodness of that guacamole dressing that makes it all come together.  For me, this is my entire meal, and I can’t get enough, so I typically make a huge one.  Try this once or twice and you will never look at a “taco salad” from a chain restaurant in the same way ever again.

Next time, we’ll get meaty.

Could have been Mark Twain ... or Confucius ...

I’m not feeling particularly well today, and it’s an off-week, so I think I’ll take the supposed advice of Voltaire (though Wikiquote refuses to confirm) and remain silent rather than to increase the quantity of bad blog posts.  He was ahead of his time, that Voltaire.  Or whoever actually said it.  Whatever they actually said.

Rotating Through the Gaming

[This is a post I wrote primarily for an audience of people who play TTRPGs in general, and D&D in particular.  Nearly three years ago now, I pondered starting separate blogs for my eclectic interests, but I never really did.  If I had, though, this would certainly be on the gaming blog.  So, if you’re not a gamer, you might want to give this one a pass.]

During the heyday of my old gaming group, there were always at least 3 or 4 of us who were willing to be GMs, but none of us who wanted to be the GM all the time.  For a while, we “solved” this apparent dilemma by just having one person GM until they got sick of it, then someone else would step up.  Everyone else would typically keep the same characters, even.  (The problem of what to do with the new GM’s old PC was, partially, what led to our policy on “GMPCs,” which will one day be its own blog post.)  But, eventually, we came up with a new idea: game rotation.

The idea was fairly simple: everyone who was willing to be a GM, and who had a good idea for a campaign, would go into the rotation, and we’d do a different campaign every week (we typically gamed once every week).  Being the nerds we were, we managed to complicate it a bit more than that by instituting a voting system.  Basically, at the end of each session, the GM for that session would say either “okay, that’s all I had prepared,” or they could say “I could go again, if you guys want to.” If they said the former, the next person in the rotation was up, the end.  If, however, they said the latter, then the other players would vote: were we actually interested in continuing this particular campaign for another week, or were we ready to move on?  Simple majority made the decision.  I would guess that maybe half the time that the GM indicated they were amenable to continuing, we voted to do so.  The other half, we would just move on, and that GM had a leg-up on their next turn at bat.  No one ever took offense, that I recall, for saying they could go on but being voted down to do so.  And I would guess that, over the nearly ten years we employed this system, the number of times we voted to play the same game a third week in a row could be counted in the fingers of one hand.

Short version: we switched campaigns a lot.

And I’ve been really excited to talk about this system for a while now, because there were a lot of great things about it.  Here are the primary reasons this was a fantastic system:

• No one ever got sick of being the GM: you were only doing it once a month or so.
• No one ever got sick of their characters: you were only playing that person once a month or so.  The rest of the time, you got be someone entirely different.
• Being exposed to different GMs with different styles is good for players, and in turn it makes them better GMs.
• It relieved a lot of the pressure for those who wanted to try being the GM for the first time.  You only had to worry about doing it for one week, and then, best case, you’d have 3 or 4 weeks to work up the courage to go again, and, worst case, you could say “man, I really didn’t like doing that!” and everyone had 3 or 4 other games to enjoy, so: no big deal.
• Assuming you were sticking with it, instead of having only a week to prepare some elaborate adventure, you basically had a month.  As we all got older and busier, this particular advantage cannot be overestimated.
• Since you did have the option of bowing out if things got too complex or too overwhelming, everyone felt more freedom to be experimental.  Try something new!  What the hell: worse come to worst, we can just toss out that campaign and you can come up with a better idea next time.
• Perhaps the best of all, we tried new things.  New settings for D&D, sure, but whole new systems.  We played Vampire (the Masquerade) and Mage (the Ascension), we played Star Wars (both the d6 and d20 versions), we played GURPS and Traveller and Call of Cthulhu.  We played weird shit, like the Wheel of Time RPG and In Nomine and homebrew shit we made up ourselves.  Because, again: why not try something new?  Could be fun for a while, you might discover a new love, and, as always, the worst case was we’d just fallback on our several other campaigns.

So it was an awesome system that we employed, as I say, for what I’m pretty sure was close to a decade.  But, you know, it wasn’t perfect.  There are a few downsides to this system:

• Even though you’re gaming every week, it’s often the case that it’s been a month since you played the character you’re picking up on any given night.  It’s sometimes hard to remember where you were in the story and sometimes even who your character actually is, especially for newer campaigns.
• Being experimental is awesome, but it does mean there are failed experiments.  I only got in a few sessions of my awesome gender-fluid Trinity character, only one of my Shadowrun character (who I can’t ever remember now), and none for my Hero or BESM characters.  I also don’t remember what I came up with for BESM, but my Hero character was a decently interesting Jekyll-and-Hyde type who I was kind of looking forward to.  (Hero is one of the few systems where that kind of character is actually buildable without jumping through a million hoops and bending a billion rules.)  Better that we tried and failed than never to have tried at all, I suppose, but they were bittersweet experiences, for sure.

These are all important considerations.  Still, I feel the good outweighed the bad, and I would definitely recommend this system to any gaming group looking to solve some of the same issues we had.  When I decided to make playing D&D with my kids a weekly thing—effectively replacing my old gaming group with one that I grew myself—I knew that I would have to institute game rotation again.  Primarily because being the sole GM in a serious, weekly game at this point in my life would probably kill me.  I already stress myself out constantly over how little time I have to do all the things I want to accomplish.  This should be a fun thing with my kids, not something that makes me feel like I’m failing to get shit done in my life.

Of course, my youngest 2 children aren’t ready to GM yet (okay, that’s what I thought ... originally).  So what we came up with was a system of 4 campaigns to rotate through:

• The Family Campaign, which I run, is our long-term, serious one where everyone has put the most work into their characters.  It’s the one where I spend the majority of my prep time.
• The Clown Campaign is another one I run, but this one we run straight “out of the book,” so to speak (that means that we use a pre-published adventure where most of the work is done for you).  For this one, we chose Waterdeep: Dragon Heist (which is, weirdly, neither about a dragon nor a heist), which is a fun, somewhat open but somewhat constrained, flexible adventure that I can have fun with at the same time that I don’t have to put too much effort into.  The campaign derives its name from the fact that the 3 characters are former clowns who came to Waterdeep with the circus and then wandered off to have other adventures.
• The Freak Campaign is being run by my eldest.  It’s also D&D, but it’s even less serious than the Clown Campaign: it’s specifically where a bunch of wacky characters (I play a unicorn, my middlest plays a nothic, and my youngest plays a homebrewed half-elf-half-changeling staff master) meet in Sigil and then get kidnapped by crazy lich who just wants to send them off on adventures while they watch, because they’re bored of having been alive for so long.  Our first mission was to raid a black dragon’s hoard (we started at 7th level for this one), and now we’re running through an updated version of Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.
• The Lizard Campaign, also run by my eldest, is our primary non-D&D campaign.  It’s ostensibly a Shadowrun campaign (meaning it uses the standard Shadowrun setting), but we started out doing a Powered by the Apocalypse version called Sixth World.  Lately, the kid has been playing around with a homebrewed conversion to mostly-5e rules.  But, either way, it’s a very not-fantasy, cyberpunk-y sort of campaign where the 3 of us are all reptilian based mutant siblings: I play the oldest sibling, a crocodile man with some spirit powers, my middle child plays the middle sibiling, a chameleon ninja; and my youngest is the youngest, a lizard hacker.  Tone-wise, it’s somewhere slightly more serious than the Clown Campaign but less so than the Family Campaign.

Additionally, my youngest—remember, she’s still only 8 at the moment—has already jumped in to to try GMing, running a Dungeon World game (with my eldest as assistant GM) which we sometimes call the Red/Blue Campaign, due to its setting in a divided city where, on one side, everyone dresses in red, and, on the other ... well, you get the picture.  The city is ruled by a king and queen (one on each side), who have two twin daughters, tragically separated by their parents’ division.  I play a dhampir (that’s a half-vampire, for those unfamiliar with the term) and my middle child plays an otter-kin (that’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like), and our goal seems to be to reunite the city.  Once we can figure out why it was spearated in the first place.  Did I mention that this kid is 8?  It’s a fairly complex plot, overall.  But she doesn’t always have the patience to be in charge.

My middle child has zero interest in being in charge of anything.

Now, we have a tendency to play these games 2 or 3 weeks in a row way more often than my old group did, but that’s partially due to my kids not having the stubbornness to stay up all night like we used to when I was young.  Many times after a few hours, they start to run out of steam, so we just call it and say “let’s play this again next week!” We’re about 2 months away from our one-year anniversary since we started this system, and this is what our rotation has worked out to so far:

• 12/11/19: Family Campaign (flashbackstories)
• 12/18/19: Clown Campaign
• 12/26/19: Family Campaign (flashbackstories)
• 1/1/20: Clown Campaign
• 1/8/20: Lizard Campaign
• 1/15/20: Family Campaign (flashbackstories)
• 1/20/20: Family Campaign (flashbackstories)
• 2/7/20: Clown Campaign
• 2/12/20: Lizard Campaign
• 2/19/20: Family Campaign (flashbackstories)
• 2/22/20: Family Campaign (flashbackstories)
• 2/26/20: Lizard Campaign
• 3/4/20: Family Campaign
• 3/13/20: Lizard Campaign
• 3/18/20: Lizard Campaign
• 3/25/20: Clown Campaign
• 4/1/20: Clown Campaign
• 4/8/20: Family Campaign
• 4/15/20: Family Campaign
• 4/22/20: Family Campaign
• 4/29/20: Family Campaign (finish up), Freak Campaign (intro)
• 5/6/20: Freak Campaign
• 5/13/20: Freak Campaign
• 5/27/20: Clown Campaign
• 6/3/20: Red/Blue Campaign
• 6/10/20: Freak Campaign
• 6/17/20: Freak Campaign
• 6/24/20: Family Campaign
• 7/1/20: Family Campaign
• 7/8/20: Family Campaign
• 7/15/20: Red/Blue Campaign
• 8/6/20: Family Campaign
• 8/26/20: Family Campaign
• 9/9/20: Family Campaign
• 9/16/20: Freak Campaign
• 9/23/20: Freak Campaign
• 9/30/20: Freak Campaign
• 10/7/20: Clown Campaign (proposed)

There have been a few weeks when we skipped roleplaying (often on those nights we would play other games, like Munchkin or Stuffed Fables or whatnot), and that one night where we played half a session of one campaign and then half a session of the next one, but overall we’re not doing too badly keeping to the schedule, if with a lot more contiguous runs than we used to have in my old group.  But that’s not necessarily a bad thing if people are keeping interested and not getting bored.  Which so far seems to be the case.

Maybe this is a system that your gaming group wants to explore, especially if you have a “one person GMs all the time” style group currently.  Give your GM a chance to shine as a player for a change!  Let your players experiment in the GM’s chair without the pressure of “this is what we’re doing now” looming over them.  Try out some new games as a change of pace.  Variety is the spice of life, so they say.  Why not extend that metaphor to your tabletop gaming?

Isolation Report, Week #29

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

Another two weeks, another 14 days spent marveling at how much worse “worse” can get.  The fact that none of it is even surprising—not that no police officers will be charged in the murder of Breonna Taylor, not that our president will not agree to leave office peacefully if defeated in the election, not that the Republicans are completely comfortable with their hypocrisy regarding Supreme Court appointments, not that the Democrats are toothless in their response and blustering pointlessly, not that the number of deaths from the pandemic continues to rise while the rest of the world is handling their shit and revoking our passports, not that the president knew how bad it was in Feburary and did nothing—is possibly the most depressing thing.  Literally the only thing that surprises me any more is that anyone else is surprised by any of these things.

The fact that Ruth Bader Ginsburg died was not so much surprising—this is 2020, after all—as it was a punch in the gut.  Someone that I watch (probably Stephen Colbert) said that they had been getting texts all weekend with various expressions of sadness and profanity; this was reflected perfectly in our online chat at $work where the NPR story reporting her death was followed nearly immediately by two messages: “NOOOOOOOOOOOOO” and ”FUCK!!” ... I’ll leave it to you to guess which one of those was from me.  Besides the terror at what damage Trump and the Senate Republicans (who have already pledged to confirm Trump’s nominee, without even finding out who it’s going to be) can do, it’s also worth reflecting on the fact that it’s just a massive loss for democracy.  I’ve watched several tributes to her life and legacy, but I highly recommend Trevor Noah’s, which touched me the most.

There isn’t a lot of other news to report: there’s been a bit (more) family drama, a guinea pig funeral, a colonoscopy appointment made, a broken dishwasher.  There’s a new D&D book coming out that I’m quite looking forward to.  The smallies and I finished season 2 of Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, which is just a beautiful, funny, touching animated series; if you have both Netflix and children and you haven’t watched this yet, you really must do.  My sleep schedule is nearly completely random at this point, but $work is still going moderately well.  Well, as well as can be expected, I suppose.  The humans in the house have mostly committed to not killing each other.  At least for now.

I understand that many folks (including my own parents) are starting to go out more, even eating in restaurants.  So far we’ve held off on that.  I pointed out to my mother this weekend that she couldn’t really be wearing her mask while she was eating.  She said, no, you just wear it to the table and then you take it off to eat.  I said that was like wearing your hazmat suit to get to the radiation and then taking it off once you arrived.  Call us overabundantly cautious if you like.  We’re fine with that.

Oh, and I did actually take a COVID test recently.  I had no fever, but there was a sore throat, and just a touch of labored breathing, so I figured better safe than sorry.  There’s a drive-through place near us where they basically hand you the giant Q-tip and tell you what to do and then you give yourself the test.  Then they text you the results; they told me to give it 3 – 5 day, but I got a text within 24 hours.  Negative, if you were concerned.  Which, as I say, I figured, but one doesn’t want to mess around.  I still believe we’re all going to get it eventually, but I really want to know when I’ve got it.  I don’t think I’m in any particular danger once I get it, but of course we have the kid with the heart condition, so one has to be careful.

I think that’s all there is to report.  I hope the world gets better soon.  I’d certainly like to start having lunch with my coworkers again, and I know The Mother would just like me to leave the house, lunch or no lunch.  And my children wouldn’t mind getting back to a semi-regular field trip schedule.  But we wait, and we watch, and we hope that the election gives the country a chance at recovery.  If not, then ... then I don’t know.  Other than being able to predict that Trump and his family will be enriched by the continued deaths of the American people, I can’t guess what that dystopian future would hold.

Hopefully it doesn’t come to finding out.

Wisty Mysteria II

"Smoke a Cigarette and Lie Some More"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.  You may also want to check out the first volume in this multi-volume mix for more info on its theme.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

The second volumes of any of my modern mixes are almost always the same: they consist of all the tracks that didn’t fit on the first volume, either in terms of style, or because I just plain ran out of room.  The pre-modern mixes¹  are different: at the time they were developed, there was no concept of a “second volume.” I thought I was putting together the definitive statement on mood X, and that would be an end to it.  Of course, being older and wiser (and continuously discovering newer and newer music), I now know that you can never really exhaustively describe a mood.  There’s always something new to say, and some new tunes to say it for you.

This the first second volume of a pre-modern mix that I’ve managed to finish, and I’m pretty happy with it.  I think every track here still retains that slightly sad (wistful), slightly creepy (mysterious) vibe that I was originally going for, but it’s expanded in nearly every way.  Where the original volume was mostly stuck in a narrow band of time (1986 – 1991), this volume spans three and a half decades (1982 – 2016).  And whereas volume I hewed very close to what “alternative” meant in the late 80s and early 90s, this volume ranges far and wide, from early 80s synthpop, to the power ska of the aughts, to downtempo electroncia, and even into some alt-country territory.  Let’s dive in, shall we?

On the sadder side of the spectrum, we have strong contenders from Richmond duo House of Freaks, British phenoms the Beautiful South, and one of my favorite 80s bands, Yazoo.  House of Freaks is one of those bands you can’t believe is only two people; they exist in a musical spectrum that I have yet to describe but starts on the slow end with Toad the Wet Sprocket, continues through the Goo Goo Dolls and the Replacements, and ends up with the metal-leaning Candlebox.  House of Freaks is on the solidly folk-leaning side of the spectrum, perhaps where the Gin Blossoms hang out, but oh so much better than those Arizona gentlemen.  No stranger to writing melancholy songs about historical events,² this one is about slave ships coming to America.  The Beautfiul South, far more popular in their native UK than they ever managed to achieve on my side of the pond, is also singing about dark times in history; in their case, it’s a condemnation of politicians who send young men off to die in wars while they stay safe at home.  Moving from the historical to the personal, Yazoo’s “Midnight” uses Alison Moyet’s powerful voice to tell a quiet story of loneliness and regret.

But the one that personally touches me the most is Chris Isaak’s “Nothing’s Changed.” A taste:

Kisses you gave me,
The vows you made me,
None of these things have changed ...
Nothing’s changed.

And yet, in the song, of course everything’s changed.  The palpable longing in this tune feels very real and raw, and Isaak’s use of dynamics and pauses really drive it home.

Switching to the other side of Wisty Mysteria’s continuum, there’s the weirdly psychedelic “We Are So Small”—weird in the sense that the Red Sea Pedestrians are far more known for klezmer-tinged Americana³—that touches on “the vastness of unbounded space,” and there’s “The Shining Path,” in which Shriekback opines that “if we were different some other time, we don’t remember”: both seem to touch on all the things we don’t know about the universe.  Still, I would probably give the award to “Lost Boys and Girls Club” by LA’s own Dum Dum Girls.⁴  This is female-fronted shoegaze-adjacent power dreampop, similar in style to Mazzy Star or fellow Angelenos Tashaki Miyaki,⁵  and it’s an excellent example of their style: there are fuzzy guitar chords, and echoey vocals, and fantastic lyrics like “your eyes are black X’s of hate and of hexes.”

But, as always, most songs are in between the extremes.  For sheer isolation, it’s tough to beat the howling wind in the background of Bronski Beat’s “Memories,” which fades directly into the howling wind of the Smiths’ “Asleep.” There’s also the figurative winds of Cutting Crew’s “Sahara,” and the winds in the title of “Sarah When the Wind Blows” by emmet swimming.⁶  I’m not sure there are any winds in “Trophy” by Bat for Lashes, but there’s certainly desolation and defiance.  And “Gold and Rose” by Myles Cochran⁷ has that echoey emptiness that only country-adjacent tunes can seem to capture.

As for Keren Ann, an anti-folk artist squarely in the mold of Regina Spektor and Feist,⁸ she often puts out gentle, shimmery pop gems such as “Not Going Anywhere,” the title track from her 2003 album.  They’re often hopeful, as this selection is, but in this case there’s a touch of wistful sadness (mostly provided by the backing violin) which makes it fit perfectly on this mix.

For this volume’s injection of songs which seem upbeat until you actually listen to them, my favorite is certainly “Happy Birthday” by Concrete Blonde.  Actually, when I arranged the original mix, I was torn between this track and the one I eventually chose, but in the end “Little Conversations” captures that wistful feeling more than this track.  But “Happy Birthday” describes a peculiar sense of loneliness where you’re not exactly sad about it, but it certainly ain’t happy either.  And I’ve always loved the temporally contemporary Voice of the Beehive, an alternative band fronted by two sisters from California and backed by former members of Madness, who are excellent at producing midtempo or even upbeat songs that have deceptively downbeat messages.  “Sorrow Floats” provides such lyrical gems as:

You can’t drown your sorrows,
Or on you will be the joke.
Because the only thing that you will drown is yourself,
‘Cause you see my dear, sorrow floats.

I always wanted to get this track onto a mix somewhere, and this was the obvious place for it.

Wisty Mysteria II
[ Smoke a Cigarette and Lie Some More ]

“Option” by Naomi, off Pappelallee
“Gold and rose” by Myles Cochran, off Marginal Street
“Big Empty” by Stone Temple Pilots, off Purple
“Nothing's Changed” by Chris Isaak, off Heart Shaped World
“Sahara” by Cutting Crew, off Broadcast
“State of Mind” by Mad Caddies, off Keep It Going
“Sarah When the Wind Blows” by emmet swimming, off Big Night Without You
“Sorrow Floats” by Voice of the Beehive, off Let It Bee
“Bottom of the Ocean” by House of Freaks, off Monkey on a Chain Gang
“Happy Birthday” by Concrete Blonde, off Free
“Not Going Anywhere” by Keren Ann, off Not Going Anywhere
“We Are So Small” by the Red Sea Pedestrians, off See Through the Eyes of Osiris!
“Trophy” by Bat for Lashes, off Fur and Gold
“Lost Boys and Girls Club” by Dum Dum Girls, off Too True
“The Shining Path” by Shriekback, off Big Night Music
“Have You Ever Been Away” by the Beautiful South, off Welcome to the Beautiful South
“Memories” by Bronski Beat, off The Age of Consent
“Asleep” by the Smiths, off Louder Than Bombs [Compilation]
“Midnight” by Yazoo, off Upstairs at Eric's
“Crescent Moon” by KT Tunstall, off Invisible Empire // Crescent Moon

Total:  20 tracks,  79:49

I’m not sure there are any truly surprising choices here, but perhaps the Mad Caddies qualify.  The power ska group from just up the California coast from me is more known for upbeat tunes such as you might find on Salsatic Vibrato.⁹  But “State of Mind,” while not exactly downbeat, is certainly really happy-making either.  The bridge proclaims “I feel the weight of the world sometimes, hanging on my head, ... look for the light at the end of this tunnel once again,” and that sums it up nicely: the singer wants to find some hope, but isn’t really succeeding.

Which only leaves us with our opener, closer, and volume namer.  The last of which may also be a surprising choice: grunge masters Stone Temple Pilots at first seem an odd pick for a volume of reflective tunes, but “Big Empty” is just that.  Full of surreal imagery (such as “her dizzy head is conscience-laden”), it’s another example of using dynamics to build an amazing song structure.  There are the quiet moments when Scott Weiland says he’s done “too much walking; shoes worn thin” as well as “too much tripping and my soul’s worn thin” (which, as thinly veiled drug references in rock anthems go, is one of the better ones), then the song bursts into guitars and drums and Scott wails that it’s “time to take her home.” It’s always been one of my favorites, even though I generally prefer Core to Purple.

As for the opener, it’s another appearance from one of my favorite obscure bands, Naomi, who were so instrumental in forging the first two volumes of Smokelit Flashback.  Given my definition of “obscure band,” many bands are obscure when I first write about them, but become far better known in the years afterwards.  But, considering that the Berlin masters of downtempo released their first album in 2002, it’s somewhat amazing to me that AllMusic barely acknowledges them, with a discography but no biograpy, and Wikipedia continues to be blissfully unaware that they exist at all.  But exist they do, and they are amazingly versatile, as you might guess from the dizzying number of mixes they’ve appeared on.¹⁰  This track, from their sophomore album Pappelallee,¹¹ is tinged with just enough regret to make it slot beautifully here:

I can’t say “no,” and I can’t say “yes,”
Just another way of saying “no,” I guess ...
When you can’t say “no,” and you can’t say “yes,”
You leave a mess.

Given that I’d discovered this song about 15 years too late for it to make onto the first volume, it was actually one of the earliest tracks I slotted for this follow-up, and it was nearly always in the anchor slot.

As for “Crescent Moon,” it has a bit of a strange tale.  I first discovered KT Tunstall via one of those “if you like that, you’ll like this!” music discovery services.  I’ve no doubt that the “that” in this case was Liz Phair; if you like Liz Phair, I find it difficult to believe that you could possibly fail to like KT Tunstall.  So I knew I wanted to check her music out, but where to start?  AllMusic convinced me that Invisible Empire // Crescent Moon—not exactly a double album, but one with two very distinct halves¹²—was her best, so I tried it.  And didn’t immediately take to it.  Not willing to give up, I went back and tried Tiger Suit and fell in love.  Most of what we’ve heard from Tunstall (on Sirenexiv Cola and Porchwell Firetime) has been from Tiger Suit, which I still feel is her best.  But Invisble Empire // Crescent Moon has its own charms; it’s far more delicate and ethereal than the upbeat, peppy Tiger Suit, so it takes a few more listens to fully appreciate.  I did use one track (“How You Kill Me” on Smooth as Whispercats) from the Invisible Empire half, but that’s been it so far.  However, when I first put this volume together, it originally ended with “Midnight,” and it just didn’t feel right as as closer.  Oh, it’s a brilliant song, sure, but not exactly the right note to go out on.  I wanted something quieter, softer, that faded into a not-uncomfortable silence.  And I rediscovered “Crescent Moon,” which is all that, and more.  With some beautfiul strings in the mix and some great lyrics sung from the point of view of the moon itself, such as “pulling all your oceans up around my body” and “never found a refuge up there in the sky,” this is a darkly pretty, beautifully poignant note to close out the volume.

Next time, we’ll drift into more surreal terroritory.  Again.

⇐ Wisty Mysteria I

__________

1 Easiest to just read volume I‘s post for what that means, if you don’t know yet.

2 We last saw them singing about the development of the atomic bomb on Rose-Coloured Brainpan II.

3 Such as their amazing cover of “Sugar in My Coffin” that we saw on Porchwell Firetime.

4 Introduced to me by a former coworker, who knew or had met one of the members.  Or former members.  I don’t recall exactly.

5 Who we’ve seen in this series many times: twice in Paradoxically Sized World (volumes III and IV) and once for the inaugural Darkling Embrace.

6 I’ve talked about my discovery of and connections to emmet swimming on Salsatic Vibrato I and Tenderhearted Nightshade I.

7 Who we first saw on Rose-Coloured Brainpan, where I mentioned that he’s another Magnatune discovery.

8 And in fact the place we’ve seen her before is right where you’d expect: Sirenexiv Cola.

9 And you will find them there, on volumes III and IV.

10 To wit: Smokelit Flashback I, Smokelit Flashback II, Shadowfall Equinox V, Bleeding Salvador I, Rose-Coloured Brainpan I, and Cantosphere Eversion I.

11 Which, the Internet just informed me, is apparently German for “Poplar Avenue.” Go figure.

12 Much like the two halves of Concrete Blonde’s Free are commonly marked “Day Side” and “Night Side.”

Isolation Report, Week #27

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

Well, it’s been a few more weeks, and the world doesn’t seem to be getting any better.  Police officers keep killing innocent black people, Trump continues to do whatever the fuck he wants, and the only people who claim to have any chance at a vaccine any time soon are so unreliable as to make the prospect of taking a vaccine even scarier than not having one at all.

The only plus side whatsoever about the political situation is that Trump is apparently too stupid to stop doing skeevy shit for even a few days, so there are constant reminders about his unfitness for the presidency.  Of course, a majority of people voting against Trump is by no means a guarantee that he won’t win, as we all know from painful experience.  Nonetheless, it’s probably the best shot we have.

On the personal front, our guinea pig died a little over a week ago, despite an emergency trip to the vet, antibiotics, and feeding a liquid diet twice a day for several days.  The kids went to their first birthday party in months, although it was understandably small (i.e. attended by only the 3 families in our “social bubble”).  The PS/4 is still on the fritz, so it’s difficult to watch DVDs.  Work is going well, I suppose ... I mean, as well as one can expect given the prolonged lack of contact with my coworkers.  On the plus side, our work hired a comedian to do a Zoom show for us.  It ain’t the same as going out to a club with the folks from work, but it’s certainly better than nothing.  (And Adam was pretty funny, I thought.)

But we’re hanging in there, and certainly it could be worse.  And, you know ... only 3½ more months till this horrible, fucked up mess of a year is finally over.

Perl blog post #61

Recently, I discovered what “literate programming” was, so I wrote a post about it.  Obviously, I posted that on my Other Blog.

So Very, Very Low

I had a longer post all ready to go, but then I got laid low with some stomach issues.  I’ll have to try again next week, sadly.

Isolation Report, Week #24

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

Well, The Mother is back from Colorado, safe and sound.  And virus free?  It seems so, but she (and our littlest one) are staying even more out of the public than usual for the requisite 2 weeks, just to be sure.  It seemed that Southwest, at least, is doing a soft-of-decent job at trying to keep everyone safe(ish): they’re only flying 2 people to a row, and I believe the masks were required (of course our ladies would have done that anyway—heck, we even got some glasses for the little one on the off-chance that that’s helpful—but it’s nice to know everyone else will mask up as well).  The trip itself ... well, I’m sure many of you know how it feels to go home to visit your family in the best of times, much less when people are in and out of the hospital.  Not so much fun, overall, although it was nice that The Mother got to meet her neice for the first time.

Meanwhile I was stuck at home with our two older children, one of whom is ostensibly an adult, but neither of whom is noted for their motivation or pliability.  I believe I described it as like pushing elephants uphill—the classic “herding cats” didn’t really begin to cover it.  If my elder child ever figures out how to monetize talking people into going out to buy them food, they will soon be wealthy; if my middle child ever figures out how to redirect all that time spent complaining about doing a thing into just doing the thing and moving on with his life, he will soon find it nearly impossible to fill all the extra hours.  Still, it was only 10 days that I had to do it unaided, and I’m somewhat compensated by the fact that my children refuse to read this blog, so they can’t bitch at me for bitching about them.

Our politics continues to be somewhat depressing, as Trump’s obvious strategy of constantly inventing new scandals so that all the old ones get forgotten continues to work on a grander and grander scale.  Having gotten away with kidnapping people off the streets of Portland, he’s moved on to screwing up everyone’s mail delivery in the hopes that will tip the election in his favor (remember: that’s not just my opinion of his actions—he actually admitted it), talking about trying to delay the election, and—perhaps most bizarre for its banality in the face of his other actions—looking into having his face added to Mount Rushmore.  Sober people are talking and even writing about the possibility that Trump could refuse to leave office even if he loses.  Trevor Noah’s old jokes likening Trump to an African dictator really seem less and less funny all the time ...

Am I heartened by the official acceptance of the Democratic nomination by Joe Biden?  Honestly, not that much.  (For my level of enthusiasm for Biden—as well as the level of enthusiasm for the majority of voters, I suspect—I will refer you once again to The Daily Show ... they sum it up better than I ever coould.)  A bit more so by the choice of Kamala Harris, who I’ve always liked, even though of course she’s not perfect.  But, hey: at this point, if lack of perfection is the worst thing you’ve got going for you, you’re a fucking political rockstar.  While Biden may not get us anywhere much farther that out from under Trump—assuming he can even get us that far—there’s always the chance that Harris will be president soon afterward, and then we might see some real reforms to the horrific state of our political system.  But, you know, I ain’t holding my breath.

I’m also extremely amused by the people (Colbert, for instance) who talk about the fact that Donald Trump fears going to jail once he’s out of office.  Even if Trump were capable of understanding consequences—and he’s definitely not, as nothing he’s ever done, no matter how bad, has ever spawned any—this is laughable to me.  We don’t send rich white guys to prison.  Roger Stone isn’t going to prison.  Nixon didn’t go to prison—hell, even Spiro Agnew didn’t go to prison.  The concept that Trump, or even any member of his family, might go to prison one day is so remarkably naive as to be amusing ... you know, if it weren’t so depressing.

Likewise, the concept that DeJoy will be in any way inconvenienced by having to testify before Congress—if he even does!—is also just silly.  If he decides to go, he’ll pretend he doesn’t “recall” anything and nothing will change.  Hell, if he decided to go and say “hell yeah, I’m sabotaging the post office: whaddaya gonna do about it?” ... still, nothing would change.  Better yet, why should he bother to go at all?  There are no consequences for not showing up, apparently, so he could make better use of that time on a golf course or a private jet or somesuch.  People on the screens rant about how Congress should be “grilling” DeJoy, or “holding him to account” ... I say, why bother?  What difference would it make?  There are no consequences for corrupt officials lying before Congress, there are no consequences for corrupt officials failing to appear before Congress, there are no consequences for Presidents scheming to rig elections, there are no consequences for police officers shooting innocent civilians ... why do we even bother any more?  Safer to expect the worst, I think.  Perhaps then I might be pleasantly surprised.

But, as I said before: I ain’t holding my breath.