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What a Week: Collecting Stray Thoughts, Week of Nov. 9th

Optional musical accompaniment

Too Many Posts

It's been quite a while since I've used this website for actual blogging, something I've never done consistently, and something I'm not sure I'll do consistently now. But I'm going to give it a try, because posting — all day, every day, about everything and nothing — just doesn't feel productive, useful, or even very satisfying. Which isn't to say that I'm going away from social media or anything, but I want to try to move more nuanced or complex thoughts over here, where I can articulate them as the gods intended — without copyediting, comments, input or feedback.

I used to maintain a newsletter, but I don't even really like the newsletter form of blogging, so I have no idea why I started doing it and don't intend to do it now. If you, like me, are ancient and of the old times, there's a handy little RSS link at the bottom of this website you can use if you want to keep up on these posts, however frequent (or infrequent) they end up being.

Anyway, on with the show.

Warrior Class

If you, somehow, inexplicably, weren't aware, my band did something fun for Halloween that we'd been talking about for years — we played, in character and in costume, as a Klingon Oi! band. This isn't the most ridiculous idea we've ever had, but it's got to be the most ridiculous one we've actually gone through with. We played at Shanghai Tunnel Bar on Halloween night to a capacity crowd. Unusually, we didn't get many photos or videos sent to us, but if you want a feel for the typical attendee's experience by the time we got on stage, the blurriness of this picture gives you a good idea:

Warrior Class performing on stage at Shanghai Tunnel Bar under purple and pink lights

Not sure how Klingons feel about intensely bisexual lighting, but I assume they approve.

We'll be recording the originals we wrote for this show soon, in all their idiot glory. Until then, if you missed the absurd promotional videos we did, you can find everything on the Warrior Class mini-site.

Words and More Words

Over the last several years, I've gotten myself into a rut of reading non-fiction, almost exclusively, and I think I've lost my taste for long-form fiction, though I still enjoy short stories. But reading non-fiction exclusively sometimes feels like work, and I'm trying to avoid making the things I like doing into (more) work for myself. This year, I've started trying to read poetry again, which satisfies a craving I get for creative, imaginative wordplay and expression. Currently, I'm reading The Intentions of Thunder by Patricia Smith, which is an astounding collection of work. Smith has a remarkable range — there are many different forms of poetry in this collection, but she maintains a very distinctive voice through them all.

I have a lot of poems already marked in this collection, but Olive Oyl Talks to People Magazine is far and away my favorite. It's a long poem, every word worth reading. It was originally published in her 1992 book Big Towns, Big Talk and appears in this new collection published last year. There's a great video of Smith reading it herself at the University of Arizona in 2004; I can't recommend it enough. If you like her work, check out this short interview in Frontier Poetry— she seems like a riot.

I've also been trying something new this year; I've been using the robots to source a weekly roundup of long-form articles for me, primarily focused on economics and history. It's pretty hit or miss (this is kind of a niche category to begin with), but the machines have turned up a few pieces that have made for interesting bus reading:

Moving Pictures

A few weeks ago, we got the opportunity to see the definitive, restored edition of The Devils, Ken Russell's incredible 1971 fever dream loosely based on the Loudun possessions, something I didn't know very much about before seeing the movie. I'm not a movie reviewer and don't really have the skill to do it justice, but if you get the opportunity to see it — especially in a theater — I strongly recommend you go check it out; it's visually incredible. If you know nothing about the movie, know this: every conceivable content warning applies. The Guardian has a great review worth reading if you're interested.

Also, this is an IYKYK thing, but the animated version of one of the most entertaining Twitter threads in history is a lot of fun:

Work is Four Letters

Occasionally, people ask me what's going on with Work is Four Letters, and it's probably easiest just to explain it here. The short answer is: nothing. Both my work and personal life this year have been intensely busy, and I just haven't had the time to keep up with the series. To give you a little bit of background, I'd estimate that every interview is probably 10+ hours of work, sometimes more. That involves coordinating the interview, preparing for it, conducting it, then reviewing the transcript, editing, formatting, editing some more, formatting some more, creating graphics, then publishing. My work days are typically 10-11 hours, I typically have at least 6 hours of band practice each week, and I do all of our household shopping and cooking — if you start doing the math, you can see the conundrum.

Further, I kind of botched an important one this year, and realized that if I'm going to do it, I really need to spend more time and effort on doing it right. I also owe an apology to Patrick Wyman, whom I interviewed, but whose interview I've not been able to get through the process to publish. I may revisit it and see how much of it's still relevant soon, but that'll likely be the last of the series for a while. I've fallen off the wagon on these before, and I'd rather not waste anyone else's time until I'm certain I can commit the time and effort needed to deliver something worth reading.

I really enjoy talking to people and publishing the interviews, but something had to give this year, and WIFL was the least painful thing to give up. I'm currently on the job market looking for something that doesn't involve a two-and-a-half hour round-trip commute every day — if I can start to free up some more time, maybe I'll return to the series, but for now, it's on hold.

Politics

I don't know that there's much I can say about what's happened in the last couple of weeks that hasn't already been said better by someone smarter, and I'm trying to pull away from having any takes at all most of the time, but I did get the opportunity to visit the lads over at Normal Men to beat up on Republicans and join in the crowing about what a tremendous victory Democrats had in the midterms.

Unfortunately, I can't help commenting on one aspect of the last couple of weeks; the glory of the midterms immediately giving way to increasingly pitched, bitter fights over who will lead each caucus is as predictable as it is disappointing. There are plenty of good-faith ways to argue about this; my personal view is that neither caucus seems to have a substantial number of members who want to replace their leader, and they'd know better than any of us who will have the best chances for success in the term to come. If there are no challengers, there's no battle, no matter what online partisans want to see. There are plenty of good arguments for keeping each leader, there are some good arguments for replacing each leader, and I think lumping Schumer and Jeffries together as roughly equivalent is a category error — each leader has a very different job and a very different caucus to lead.

There's a discussion to be had about what the role of caucus leader is in the age of instantaneous reaction — what skills are needed, how do we judge effectiveness, what does being a leader mean — but it's not a discussion I feel like having with anyone who wants to have it.

Music

I've been in a bit of a music rut, but I recently came across Perennial on Bluesky, who are a delightful mod/punk band from New England. I've been kind of disappointed with how few bands are trying to make promotion work on Bluesky — there's something about the platform as it currently works that just doesn't quite lend itself to this — but I admire these folks' effort. The closest comparison I can think of for this band is The International Noise Conspiracy in their first couple of albums — if you're a fan of striped shirts, mod beats and organ, you're going to dig them.

Housekeeping

Finally, a quick housekeeping note to close out this too-long blog post: I recently rebuilt this site from the ground up as a static website to get away from giving Matt Mullenweg any more money, and I'm still figuring out my workflow for it. If you come across something broken, you can @ me on Bluesky or email me, details here. If there's something specific you'd like me to write about in one of these missives, let me know; my opinion's worth what you're paying for it, but I'm at least theoretically open to feedback, despite what you read at the beginning.