General

Remembering that the news makes me feel bad

A few days ago I unsubscribed from two well-written, timely and informative newsletters.

Both focused on covering politics and the news, mostly in terms of how politics often is the news. Both were American-centric, but the U.S. does have a rather lot of influence on the world.

Over the past few days, I found myself starting to read the current edition of each newsletter, then stop. A few times I just straight up deleted them, unread. I thought about how I stopped checking the news on a daily basis and how every time I have checked the news since then, it reinforces what a wise decision that was.

These newsletters were making me feel pretty much the same way as ingesting the news on a daily basis had: bad.

If I want to feel bad, I can just step on the scale. It’s quicker, costs me nothing and fifteen minutes later I’ll have either forgotten about it or rationalized it in some way (“Focus on the long term, not daily fluctuations”). The bad feeling does not linger.

Reading bad or unpleasant news–especially political news–lingers. It burrows into my psyche. I don’t like that. Is it a me problem? Possibly.

But I have an easy me solution–just don’t read that stuff! I can still stay informed without soaking in it, as it were.

And so my email inbox grows slightly slimmer. Now if I can just do the same.

Haiku to April showers, 2023 edition

April Showers

A refreshing rain
Everything is lush and green
You are getting soaked

And the ChatGPT version:

AI-pril Showers

Raindrops on petals
April showers bring new life
Spring's rebirth begins

One of us perhaps appreciates the rain more.

Who are the ad wizards who came up with this one?

Bonus points if you get the reference in the title (which also means you are old. See the end of this post for a link to the source).

I got an email from Kobo, which sells eBooks and eReaders (I’m using the spelling they use, which the LanguageTool extension in Firefox is insisting is horrible and wrong):

So, this is riffing on the famous line Tom Hanks utters in Forrest Gump:

Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.

Forrest Gump, Esquire

Except it completely reverses the line because that’s cute? Funny? Just kinda dumb?

Just kinda dumb.

I’m actually trying to be more positive these days, but I am compelled to point out this kind of lazy nonsense when it is expressly sent to my inbox on a Monday morning. Don’t do this to me, Kobo!

Also, here’s a link revealing the source of the title, from an SNL episode in 1992. How is it possible 1992 was 31 years ago? I was 27, which feels like being a newborn now.

Things I miss from the 1970s

Me in 1977 (on the left). Stay classy.

I thought it would be fun to list things I miss from the 1970s. Then I realized I couldn’t think of any.

I went from 5 to 15 years old in the 70s. I can’t say I recall a lot from being 5, but what if I could go back to my 15-year-old body with my current adult mind? Wouldn’t that be fun? Or would it be horrifying? Maybe horrifyingly fun?

I will explore this in a future post.

For now, here are three things I miss from the 1970s, for real:

  • The price of everything. Hey, since 1970 we’ve had 53 years of inflation, it adds up.
  • The languid pace of childhood summers (I went from 5 to 15 in the 70s)
  • Lawn darts. Fun and stupidly dangerous, the perfect combination for kids!

My subconscious is trying to cheer me up via dreams

short furred orange cat on brown surface
This cat came up when I searched for “dream.” Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I’ve had a lot of dreams the past few nights, and I’ve actually remembered several of them. They are both silly and weird, as all good dreams should be. Given the stress I’ve gone through lately, it almost seems like my subconscious mind is trying to offer a calming balm of sorts. I’m good with that.

Dream #1: The cat and the keyboard

This dream involved one of my internet gaming pals, Circuit. It played out over some kind of webcam he had set up. He was showing off a couple new things: a shiny new black keyboard with a knob (like the one I have). For some reason, the keyboard was on the carpet. I remember the carpet was yellow. And he also had a new black cat, though I never got the name. Circuit mentioned that one issue is the cat seemed to barf a lot and just as he said this the cat barfed on his new keyboard. That’s where the dream ended.

I laughed when I woke up and remembered the dream.

Dream #2: Mom and the duck device

The second dream featured my mom, who is now 88. In the dream, she looked like she was in her late 40s or early 50s, but I couldn’t tell if the dream was in the past or if she was unnaturally young in the present. It started in a booth of what I think was a McDonald’s. I don’t recall seeing anything to positively ID it, but that was the vibe. The scene abruptly changed to outside, near a tree by the road that went past the McDonald’s. I think it may have been the McDonald’s in my hometown of Duncan, so the road would be the island highway, though due to its location, traffic does not go roaring past here. My mom was talking to a man who was down low by the tree, dogging or something. He apparently had something controversial to report, and she was acting like a news reporter, complete with audio recording device. She promised not to use his name and turned the device on to start recording their conversation. The device was disguised as a duck and to turn it on, she had to squeeze the duck, which caused it to open its mouth and quack. She then held the duck to him and started the questions. That’s where the dream ended.

I not only laughed when I woke up and remembered this dream, I laugh every time I think of it. My mom was holding the duck like an Uzi, too.

Proposed site logo, 2023 edition

Yeah, I’m still mulling the site redesign. I’ll get to it eventually. Probably.

In the meantime, I used Canva and some stock objects and background to make this:

And this:

Both are magical. I didn’t even notice I’d used a Star Trek font in the second one until later.

Also, apparently I have a thing for pickles? How Freudian!

Now, I won’t actually use these for site logos, but part of me really wants to. I will continue to mull what to really do…

The song remains somewhat the same

How did I not notice this until just now, 12 years after R.E.M. retired as a band?

The first song on three consecutive R.E.M. albums includes the word “song” in the title. It can’t be a coincidence! It also can’t mean much other than just being a goofy little thing, so probably not worthy of a Dan Brown novel (what happened to him, anyway?)

  • Finest Worksong (Document, 1987)
  • Pop Song 89 (Green, 1988)
  • Radio Song (Out of Time, 1991)

Did the word “song” appear in any of their other song titles?

No.

~fin~

R.E.M. albums ranked, 2023 edition

Check here for the last time I ranked R.E.M.’s 15 album oeuvre, way back in 2013: Ranking R.E.M. albums from 1983 to 2011

It’s now been 12 years (!) since R.E.M. packed it in. Their first album, Murmur, was released 40 years ago (!) when vinyl was more than hip, it was one of only two real formats for buying music (the other was cassette tape–the kind that any tape deck eventually ate).

Here is my re-revised list of R.E.M. albums–from #1 to #15.

First, the chronological list of albums as released:

  • Murmur, 1983
  • Reckoning, 1984
  • Fables of the Reconstruction, 1985
  • Lifes Rich Pageant, 1986
  • Document, 1987
  • Green, 1988
  • Out of Time, 1991
  • Automatic for the People, 1992
  • Monster, 1994
  • New Adventures in Hi-fi, 1996
  • Up, 1998
  • Reveal, 2001
  • Around the Sun, 2004
  • Accelerate, 2008
  • Collapse Into Now, 2011

My 2023 ranking (numbers indicate position relative to the 2013 ranking):

  1. Automatic for the People, 1992 (-)
  2. Lifes Rich Pageant, 1986 (-)
  3. Murmur, 1983 (+2)
  4. Monster, 1994 (-1)
  5. Out of Time, 1991 (+4)
  6. New Adventures in Hi-fi, 1996 (+1)
  7. Green, 1988 (+6)
  8. Reckoning, 1984 (-2)
  9. Fables of the Reconstruction, 1985 (-1)
  10. Collapse Into Now, 2011 (-6)
  11. Up, 1998 (+3)
  12. Document, 1987 (-1)
  13. Accelerate, 2008 (-3)
  14. Reveal, 2001 (-2)
  15. Around the Sun, 2004 (-)

Observations:

  • Only three albums didn’t change positions, and they are at the extremes: #1, 2 and 15.
  • The gap between #14 (Reveal) and #15 (Around the Sun) is the biggest between any two albums. ATS is easily the worst album R.E.M. put out. It should probably be at #20.
  • The biggest slide is Collapse Into Now, their final album, dropping from #4 all the way to #10. It’s a fine album and a worthy send-off, but it just doesn’t shine as bright as the others ahead of it, in retrospect.
  • Four of the bottom five albums are four of their last five–not a good trend for a long-lived band!
  • Green leaps from #13 to #6. Why? While it may not have been the band’s artistic peak, it captures them in an experimental mood, expanding their sound and–importantly–sounding like they are having a lot of fun while doing it. Especially after Automatic for the People, the band appeared to have sent its collective sense of humour into the universe’s largest black hole.
  • Murmur and Monster, despite being very different albums, are basically interchangeable, ranking-wise.
  • Sometimes I like it when R.E.M. rocks out (Monster), and sometimes less so (Accelerate), although to be fair, the latter is an excellent album to jog to.
  • If the second half of Up (#11) was stronger, it would probably rank near the top five.
  • In hindsight, Document is a good but not great album. I feel like the band was shifting gears and the album catches them midway through. If you think of it as the first half of Green, it makes more sense, in a way.

Also, when you look at the albums in chronological order, you may ask yourself: Did R.E.M. alienate a large part of its fan base with Monster being the follow-up to Automatic for the People? Yes, yes they did! Observe:

  • Monster (which I think is one of their most inventive and creative albums–if you like that feedback-laden, wall of sound approach) was the utter opposite of Automatic. It still sold well, probably propelled at least in part by momentum.
  • New Adventures in Hi-fi probably hit many people as a weird blend of the previous two albums, with loud rockers like on Monster, combined with hushed meditations like on Automatic–and being neither fish nor fowl, it began their first real decline in sales.
  • Up: With Bill Berry (drummer) leaving the band, they began to experiment more openly, using sequencers, drum machines and noodling around with atmospherics, resulting in an album that was part R.E.M. and part whatever-they-were-turning-into.
  • Reveal is a weird one, too. It mixes sunny, Beach Boys-style songs with classic R.E.M. (“Imitation of Life”) and goes fully experimental on other songs, like “Saturn Return”. The production is intricate, and the sound is dense. This is not an album designed to hit the top of the pop charts.
  • Around the Sun: Or “What a band completely uninterested in being a band anymore when they are 3/5ths of the way through a record contract sounds like.” This one managed to put off everyone: the experimentation was replaced by a bunch of limp songs that generated no heat, didn’t sound like classic R.E.M.–or any other version–and featured lyrics by Michael Stipe that were so straightforward they were just bland. An impressively lacklustre outing.
  • The last two albums turned things around, preventing them from destroying their legacy, but it was pretty obvious after Collapse Into Now that they were done.

My 2013 ranking:

  1. Automatic for the People
  2. Lifes Rich Pageant
  3. Monster
  4. Collapse Into Now
  5. Murmur
  6. Reckoning
  7. New Adventures in Hi-fi
  8. Fables of the Reconstruction
  9. Out of Time
  10. Accelerate
  11. Document
  12. Reveal
  13. Green
  14. Up
  15. Around the Sun

Climate change hooray: Sunburn in March

silhouette of plants during golden hour
Photo by Billel Moula on Pexels.com

Today, Nic and I went birding at Reifel Bird Sanctuary and Boundary Bay (I’ll have a separate post on the outing soon™) and the weather was unusually nice (it got up to 17C in New Westminster, breaking the old record by two degrees). It was lovely and sunny and even though I wore pants and a jacket, I managed to get a mild sunburn on the one part of me that was exposed–the back of my neck. The last time I got a sunburn in March was never, so hooray for climate change!

Still, I’d rather get burned a little now and be reminded to wear sunblock on future sunny days before it gets summer-like, and the potential burn is much more intense. I just didn’t expect that reminder to happen while it was still officially winter.