It was a pleasure today to select recordings from which to make custom ringtones for when Sullivan and Éa call me. (I’ve been using “Whistle Stop” from Disney’s Robin Hood for Carla for years.) Éa even advised me on my selection for her, suggesting the winner (the first twenty-nine seconds of “Mrs. Robinson” by Simon & Garfunkel. For Sullivan, I chose the first thirty seconds of Quincy Jones’ “Soul Bossa Nova,” signifying his easygoing demeanor and his prioritizing enjoyment.

Today was the first day I had “If reading a book, read the book” on my to-do list. It appears at 5 PM instead of at the beginning of the day so I’m not prompted to read a book over lunch, which is always a matter of divided attention and never long enough to give the book the time it needs to actually enter my mind and be fully enjoyed. I’ll read articles over lunch when I’m eating alone, sure. But sometimes I even question that, wondering whether the time might be better spent fully enjoying my food or allowing my mind to wander.

Anyway, I just dedicated all my attention to reading a mere half a chapter of Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper. My reading pleasure in doing so, was, like triple that when I was reading the same book while also eating. This is the way.

In British English, collective nouns, such as “team” and “Microsoft,” often take plural verbs, as in “My team are headed for the championships” and “Microsoft charge me for cloud storage.” I wish we did it this way in America, at least for corporations and governments. That’s because using the singular here hides the personal agency at play in those corporations’ and governments’ decisions and policies, and therefore the credit or guilt people deserve. I dislike it for the same reason I dislike non-poetic metonymy.

A workaround in American English is to use something like “the folks at Google” or “the members of the Trump administration.”

You have heard it said, “Hate has no home here.” But I say to you, make a home for hate your heart. Hate heartily that which is hateful, including, yes, hate itself of any human being.

This is, I admit, merely a prescriptivist’s kvetch, since at some point somebody certainly did sneak a definition into the word “hate” that appears to mean “hostility and aversion based on category of human, such as skin color or sexuality.” But this new definition must not be permitted to elbow out its very useful precursor, that is, simply, “intense or passionate dislike.” Hate, defined as such, is, like trust and guilt, a very good thing—a virtue, even—when its is justly pointed. (I don’t need to point out the same about love, although the inverse is worth saying: Love is a very bad thing when it is unjustly pointed.) And there are plenty of things good and right to hate: ecocide, betrayal, unjustified violence, selfishness, and so on.

Just watched: The Killing (1956) adapted for screen and directed by Stanley Kubrick. A perfectly shot and richly instructive fable. (And I mean that fable part: My internal landscape has these character-constructs in it.) Tense the entirety of its short runtime. With dialogue whose clever audacity made me laugh out loud several times. Film noir bettered only by Touch of Evil and The Night of the Hunter. Its unconventional narrative structure is often praised for its ingenuity, but I think its primarily serves to (successfully) help the viewer understand the plot. (Plots are often hard to follow in film noir. See the otherwise excellent Out of the Past.) I can’t tell you my favorite part without spoiling it. 🍿

Have the folks at Google been trying to sell you a storage subscription because your Google account storage is running full? Is your Gmail the primary taker upper of space? Worry no more! They have provided an alternative solution free of charge: Open a second Google account and then follow the Get only old messages instructions here to effectively turn the second account into an archival repository.

Then delete your wayback emails, now safely archived elsewhere, from the original account by:

1. searching for all your messages from before a date (e.g., mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/before:2014),
2. ticking the checkbox column header at top left of the table to select all messages in view,
3. clicking Select all conversations that match this search to go beyond just the messages in view, and
4. clicking Delete.

The import process will take several days. Once it’s complete, you’ll want to disconnect the new account from the old one so the new one doesn’t become a second account whose storage space you have to worry about.

Thank God for evolution.

I can’t sleep at night.
Why?
It’s the problem of the heels.
I can’t win this fight.
Why?
It wasn’t part of the deal.

All I want is to feel the same
We could be walking on the ocean
But something’s always wrong ✏️ 🎤 🎵

I’ve gotta get a hold on my face ✏️ 🎤 🎵

I don’t want your mollification.
I want your real remorse. ✏️ 🎤 🎵

Your guyline is showing ✏️ 🎤 🎵

I stand amazed that humans can distinguish /m/ from /n/.

Just re-listened to: Supernatural (1998) by DC Talk, an album whose release was the first one I can remember anticipating with excitement, prompting me to assemble something resembling a listening party before I knew those were a thing. (Primary reaction: “Let’s go figure out the weird chord progression on ‘My Friend (So Long)’!”)

Yet I don’t post it to recommend it—despite its considerable formal, vocal, and especially harmonic virtues, it comes off sonically bloated, smugly identitarian, lyrically derivative, and vapidly devotional instead of inventive, moral, artistic, and Christian—but rather to wonder: How am I only just now realizing DC Talk was a boy band?

May may be merry
Yet September’s the real cherry ✏️ 🎤 🎵

•• ¡ spoiler alert ! ••

The most remarkable thing about The Night Watchman, which is a good friend’s favorite book ever, is the suggestive congruence between Bucky’s paralysis, brought on by his sin, and Thomas’ stroke, brought on by his struggle against others’ sin.

I suppose it’s more accurate and parallel to say it’s Patrice’s vengeful unforgivingness that brings on Bucky’s paralysis. But may be wading into dicey discussional waters.

A mid-hoc surmise I surmise will be of some encouragement to current and future fellow parents of teenagers: Our relationships with our teenage children, especially those of the same sex as us, are likely to go through an extended span of thinness. That is, it’ll seem there is no relationship, that we’re just a chauffeur and a cook and a money tree. But don’t panic. Don’t press to hard. You know what to do. Just keep doing that and be patient. The kids’ll come around.

Just re-listened to: Love Is The King (2020) by Jeff Tweedy. The homey, sentimental sound of a veteran American songwriter, fifteen years sober, sitting on the front porch of his family home at sunset with his amps, his sons, and his elder son’s drum set, strumming perfect little gems of songs into existence on his many guitars, but especially his nylon-string Martin, because he has pandemic time to kill. Some of the songs are sung to his wife. Half of them are honky-tonk. The album gets a touch sluggish toward the end, but that’s because the sun has set and it’s time to go to bed.

I do wonder whether my having become a lighter sleeper has something to do with me working in our basement and thus having less exposure to natural light.

My ideal workstation is in something like a climate-controlled, outdoor telephone booth:

You bring the fog
In the fall a soft fog
And I follow a call
Saying, “Come” ✏️ 🎤 🎵

Bet your scruples have some loopholes ✏️ 🎤 🎵

Just re-listened to: Carried Along (2000) by Andrew Peterson. Carefully arranged, folk-esque acoustic pop marking the arrival of the most skilled evangelical songwriter of the century. Peterson’s fanboyism for Rich Mullins is evident—and quite welcome. The album’s only flaw is the fanboy’s reedy vocals.

Ain’t no room for hobbyhorses
In the stables of the Lord ✏️ 🎤 🎵

Mother Nature’s little sister
Taught me everything I know ✏️ 🎤 🎵

Just re-listened to: Return to Cookie Mountain (2006) by TV on the Radio. Thick, noisy, wordy, loopy apocalyptic post-rock that manages to maintain pop leanings. (We observe once again that minimum viable pop is catchy melodies plus reliable rhythm, which this album has in large, dirty piles.) An excellent would-be Bowie album, as if Bowie had been taking Peter Gabriel-administered steroids in a cavern and as an eerie side effect had developed the ability to sing in two voices simultaneously from his one mouth as long as those voices were separated by octaves or some other such wide harmonic interval.

It all makes for an excellent Halloween album. But despite its spook and force, the pathos is what lingers. And I haven’t even yet paid attention to the lyrics, of which there are plenty. Love is kinda crazy with a spooky dirtywhirl like you.

The album art depicts a nest, but it sure looks to me like a crown of thorns.