Category: blog

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frances farmer will have her revenge

Posted on By Wil

Remember going to the record store, browsing for hours, listening to tons of recordings on headphones, soaking up the culture and that vibe we can all feel in our memories, but can’t describe with words?

Remember getting the tape, even though you really wanted the record (that you could make into a tape), because you could listen to the tape in the car, right away?

Remember getting home and listening to the whole album, both sides of it, for the very first time?

Remember buying a CD because the single was great, only to discover that you spent 18 dollars on a piece of shit, and you were stuck with it?

Remember discovering a record that did not have a single bad track on it, and how rare that was?

I don’t know how many of you share similar experiences, but I suspect it’s not zero.

This is where we all expect me to dump on streaming or something, right? That’s not what this is about.

I love the convenience of streaming. I love the access to basically the entire history of human recordings, so when I feel compelled to listen to The Andrews Sisters and Tones On Tail in the same day, it doesn’t involve a trip to the mall. I love massive playlists of music they don’t play on the radio, that I can shuffle into my own sonic time machine. I can do all of those things I remember (except for going to record stores; I’ll still do that whenever I can), with the added bonus of never being stuck with a shitty record, ever again.

But I’ve noticed that the playlists have taken over, and I haven’t actually listened to a full album in a really, really long time. Like, other than Pink Floyd records, which must be listened to in their entirety, always (I will not be taking questions at this time), it just hasn’t occurred to me to listen to, say, all of In Utero.

I reset the counter on DAYS SINCE I LISTENED TO AN ENTIRE ALBUM to 0 last night. I really wanted to hear Drain You (yes, I know it’s off Nevermind, and I was just talking about In Utero; settle down), I saw the cover for In Utero, just sitting right there like, “Remember me? Let’s have a cuddle.” And I was like, “this is the best idea anyone has ever had.” I pushed play, then sat there and listened to the whole thing for the first time in … I’m going to describe the amount of time as “an embarrassment”.

Wow, I forgot how much I loved this album when it came out, how I played it on repeat in the car, on the boombox CD player when we played street hockey, how it was such a revelation to young me. I’d forgotten a couple of the songs, too, so it was like discovering them for the first time all over again.

When it ended, I immediately listened to all of Bleach, followed by Nevermind.

I remembered those days, before Smells Like Teen Spirit was everywhere almost over night. I briefly thought about an entire generation that grew up hearing it as just another track on Now That’s What I Call Arena Rock While Missing The Point Of The Lyrics, Volume 5, and how the context for them and Gen X is so profoundly fucking different. Mostly, I remembered how much I loved all three of these records, how much I loved Unplugged, how I played them all as loud as I could stand, and how devastated I was when Kurt Cobain died. I remembered how angry I was at him, back when I didn’t know how to feel any other emotion if I was hurt or felt a loss.

ANYWAY. When the last note of Endless, Nameless faded, and I had fully experienced all of those memories, it occurred to me that I had listened to the entire Nirvana studio catalog — the band that will likely go down as my generation’s Beatles — and it was just over two hours long. Holy shit. They changed an entire generation in, like, 120 minutes (that sounds cooler if you imagine it in Kurt Loder’s voice) and I can’t even imagine what they would have done if Kurt hadn’t died, and they’d stayed together long enough to do their American Idiot. …right?

I then took a moment to be grateful, and to admire Dave Grohl, for having the strength and courage to carry on and form Foo Fighters, which is another band that means a lot to me. He’s talked about feeling intimidated around Kurt, not believing in himself as a writer, and doing whatever it took to power through it all because he had to. In my own way, I can relate to that. I think a lot of us can. And to carry on after Taylor Hawkins died, too? Jesus Christ, man. Dave Grohl doesn’t know I exist but I am so sorry for the loss he has experienced. May their memories be a blessing.

I still love grunge, even if it hurts my heart when a kid calls it Classic Rock. But I’m old and out of touch. Who is this generation’s Nirvana? I mean, it’s probably Nirvana, but who is speaking to kids the same way, now, as they did, then?

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look! an old man is talking again!

Posted on By Wil

On my Tumblr thingy, someone asked:

I know it’s been a bit since you were in school, but as someone who is about to go to university, do you have any tips?

I wanted to share my reply:

It is such a huge privilege when someone your age asks an Old like me for advice. When I was young, I thought dudes in their 50s were lame and had nothing to offer. Now that I’m one of those dudes, I understand what a gift it is when you ask me to share my experience. I hope this helps you a little bit.

Make time to meet your professors during their office hours.

You don’t have to go have a deep conversation, just introduce yourself, tell them which class you are in, and thank them for their time.

You’re doing this because there will be a time in your future when you need an extra day for something, or a little extra help or attention, or something like that. When you go to talk to your professor about that, it won’t be the first time you’ve met them, and that will make a difference.

That’s on an academic level. On a personal level, you’re going to spend a LOT of the next few years figuring out who you are, what your values are, and how you want to live your life. Most of us try to be someone profoundly different from who we are, in our first year or two, because we’re on our own and trying out what it feels like to be an adult. The thing I want you to just remember while you do that is: you know who your are in your heart, and if you try to not be that person, you will draw people to you who don’t like *you* as much as they like who you are pretending to be.

It’s a long way of saying “be true to yourself. Know what your values are and live them consistently, so you find other people who share them.”

Finally, the advice I give everyone who asks me questions like yours:

Choose to be kind.

Choose to be honest.

Choose to be honorable.

Choose to do your best and understand that your best will vary from day to day. Don’t judge yourself when your best on Monday is not the same as it was last Thursday. Just do your best, consistently.

You’re at the beginning of a really great time in your life. I hope you get everything you want out of it, enjoy learning, and make life long friends.

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Six unelected people forcing their unpopular christian nationalist agenda on a population of three hundred and forty million is not a Democracy. It is tyranny.

Posted on By Wil

Josh Marshall writes:

Donald Trump threatens the entire existence of the American republic. He is able to do this because the Supreme Court he created is assisting him in doing so. It is a corrupt Court – on which more later. It overturned a central right for half of our population. It routinely mixes and matches rationales, jurisprudences, logics to arrive at the end point of transforming America into their extremist vision. We’ve heard that yesterday’s decision was a terrible decision, an extremist decision, that it changes the American experiment fundamentally. No disagreement with any of those points. Most importantly, in my mind, it’s a fake decision. Yes, it will now be controlling within the federal courts. But it doesn’t change the constitution any more than a foreign army occupying New England would make Massachusetts no longer part of the United States. That may seem like a jarring analogy. But it’s the only kind that allows us to properly view and react to this Supreme Court.

The rationale for the decision yesterday has literally no basis whatsoever in the US constitution.

Josh is correct, but I don’t think it matters. This corrupt, activist, fascist SCOTUS majority does not care that they just made up law out of whole cloth; they’ve been doing it for years. These six people who make up the majority have decided that the Constitution, 250 years of precedent, popular opinion, and the foundational ideas that have made America what it is since 1787 are what they say they are, fact, history, the will of the people and precedent be damned.

I live in a country of three hundred and forty million people.

In this country, six unelected christian nationalists, five of whom were placed on the court by presidents who lost the popular vote, all of whom are opposed by SEVENTY PERCENT of the population, are making up laws out of whole cloth because their power is unchecked. A country that allows six people to impose their regressive authoritarianism on an entire population is not a free country. It is not a Democracy.

America has not been attacked like this since 9/11. Six unelected people forcing their christian nationalist agenda on a population of three hundred and forty million is not a Democracy. It is tyranny.

In the pointless parlor game of “What can Joe Biden Do, Now That He’s Above The Law” (as if he ever would), everyone is missing the central message I took from yesterday’s ruling: SCOTUS is going to install Trump as dictator for life, by any means necessary. Somehow, after he loses the popular vote again, and after he’s even lost the Electoral College again, these six Fascists will invent a reason to overturn the will of the electorate, again, even if they have to invent law to do so. Every single one of their rulings this term have been part of their coup. Now, just line them all up and connect the dots. Don’t leave out Project 2025 or Agenda 47.

This is terrifying. We barely survived four years of Trump, when there were at least some guardrails around him. SCOTUS just tore those down and turned them to ash. I am terrified that we are four months away from the likely end of what passes for freedom in America, and once it’s gone, I doubt it is coming back in my lifetime.

blog

Something you need to know about me is that I’ll do literally anything in the world before I will go to the doctor.

Posted on By Wil

It was Thanksgiving 2022. We went to our kids’ for the holiday, and because I’m a dad who loves his children and family more than anything in this world, I totally forgot I was in my 50s and thought it would be just fine to play badminton with my boys.

Turns out it wasn’t. After the thrill and adrenaline and fun of playing a game I’m terrible at with my adult children who didn’t take it easy on me even a little bit wore off, I started feeling pain and weakness in my shoulder. By the following morning, it had spread to my elbow. When we got back home, my wrist had joined in on the action.

Something you need to know about me is that I’ll do literally anything in the world before I will go to the doctor. I know that’s not the smartest thing, but it’s how I’ve been forever. But I’m trying to actually center myself and my self care more consistently as I enter this part of my life, so I only ignored this for a little over a year; a new personal record.

About five weeks ago, I woke up and couldn’t lift my left arm. It was completely dead and my forearm hurt like crazy. What the fuck, Wil’s Body? All I did was sleep!

Well, all I did was sleep and ignore an injury for a year. So I went to see the doctor about a month ago, and told him the whole embarrassing story.

He ran all these tests on me, and looked at my medical history. He pointed out that when I was 18, I was a goalie in a recreational hockey league. I took a slapshot to my face that defied physics and engineering, collapsed my helmet into my forehead, where it split open like an orange peel that was squeezed too tightly. It also gave me whiplash, and herniated two discs in my neck.

He said that it was a serious injury, and while I had always known that in the abstract, I hadn’t even really thought about exactly how serious it was.

I don’t remember much of it (I was in shock at the time), but I spent hours in surgery with a cosmetic surgeon who did such a good job closing it (with something like 30 stitches), I don’t have a cool scar to show off today. Nobody said anything about my skeleton, my neck, my spine, or the herniated discs, so I never followed up about what turns out to be the most serious and lasting part of the whole thing. I don’t know how a person goes over 35 years with a neck as messed up as mine without knowing it, but all I can do is point to myself and make the “i dunno” face with the hands up.

So when I woke up with a completely dead and aching arm (because I slept on my left side like a maniac), I admitted to myself that I’d chosen poorly for over a year, and I made an appointment with the same doctor who has provided excellent care to Anne.

I fully expected that I had a soft tissue injury, possibly a tear in something. I thought maybe surgery would be involved, which would not be great but is entirely my fault for choosing the “ignore it and it will go away” approach to being a middle-aged dude.

But it turns out that, according to the X-ray and other tests he did, I have no soft tissue injury or any tears in any part of my body. The badminton and associated activities just pushed my body past its ability to barely hold itself together.What I do have is no curve in my neck, three almost entirely compressed discs, and a bunch of muscles all doing their best to compensate. These things work together to form Voltron, where Blazing Sword is my arm feeling like it’s experiencing an electrical fire that also itches. Really great stuff. I’ll form the head.

The good news, according to my doctor, is that physical therapy will heal all of this. The great news, according to me, is that I get to start it today after waiting a month for a spot to open up.

I’m so excited to go do this, I woke up two hours before my alarm this morning and I’ve been counting down for the last six hours until I get to leave.

That’s so fucking middle-aged, isn’t it? “Oh my god, you guys! I am so excited to start physical therapy, I woke up early! What a great day! See you all at 4pm for dinner, after my nap!”

…still punk as fuck.