Wow, twenty of these. Twenty weekly posts in a row. That’s a pretty solid blogging record for me, even if you discount the occasional post I’ve done in between Weeknotes posts. Clearly, gone are the days when I start a year with “I’m gonna blog more” and quit after two or three posts until June.
Unfortunately the fog of coronavirus brain has really hit me bad this weekend. Not like the week was uneventful. I mean, just yesterday I got a better-than-expected quarantine haircut, because I still have to appear in professional Zoom meetings on a daily basis — the audio for which sounds really good now that I’ve tweaked my mixer settings. Watched some good TV (season 4 of KIM’S CONVENIENCE) and some bad TV (THE LOST GOLD OF WORLD WAR II and THE CURSE OF SKINWALKER RANCH). Read some things. Dug up some old tutorials about recording and editing audio. Other stuff, too — the week’s details are just, well, foggy. So I’ll come back next week, how about that?
A REDISCOVERY OF SOUND
If you’re following me on Twitter, you’re probably sick of pictures of the new mixer setup. But I just had to show off this hack (cramming the mixer on a book stand so it stands up) that allows me to reclaim some desktop real estate.
I finally have it set up right so that the audio for my Zoom calls really is good. But I discovered an unintended benefit this week — pumping music from my laptop through the mixer and into a set of monitor headphones cranked up to an unwise volume actually took me back in time.
See, in the days before iPods or other devices connected to Bluetooth speakers, decent portable music depended on how big a boombox your arms could handle and how many tapes or CDs you were willing to cart around. The sound was as good as you could get (depending how much money you were willing you shelled out), but it was never as good as plugging into an actual stereo system. You know — those huge components connected to a turntable that your older relatives (or young, obnoxious hipster friends with turntables) have that play music when put together.
I spent a lot of time in my ‘tween and teen years with a set of headphones plugged into my dad’s stereo. For me, the joy wasn’t just in the so-called HiFi audio quality. It was hearing things you never heard on the radio — the things that used to creep into studio recordings that could make a studio performance real like chatter or odd reverbs. It was hearing every single instrument part being played. Studio chatter in between and sometimes underneath certain tracks. It really was a world I would regularly get lost in.
I’d gotten used to listening to “good enough” audio over the decades, same as everyone else. I’d basically quit bothering tweaking audio levels on the computers I’ve owned; maybe I could’ve been doing this all along. But stumbling back into the joys of audio — where even the shitty 192 kbps .mp3s I’ve accumulated but never re-ripped over the years sound good — actually put me back in touch with something deeper this week that I’d forgotten about.
FEEDING MY EARS
The latest episode of KCRW’s UNFICTIONAL breaks my heart.
When Fedelina Lugasan moved to the U.S. from the Philippines for work, she was comforted by the fact that she’d start her new life with a family she trusted. But her life and job were not what they told her it would be, and she was cut off from family back home. When an opportunity presented itself, she took her freedom into her own hands.
There, but for the lucky circumstances of me and my family, go I. Not that my mother ever experienced this, but Nanay’s voice in this piece (Lugasan and the woman doing the transalation) reminds me of Mom. And not just because this is the story of an older Filipina, but because the horrors in this story check off a lot of the boogeyman scenario boxes that my parents put into my head as a young kid about how Filipinos could be treated if we stepped out of line, but for the occasional intervention of other Filipinos, which justifies the “us vs. them” mentality that immigrants with the barest measure of privilege sometimes have.
On the brighter side, though, here’s a 10-minute discussion with a friend-slash-my favorite writer ever, M. Rickert, on THE COODE STREET PODCAST.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK
For any of you out there thinking about applying to Viable Paradise…
If you want more info, you can check this out, or hit me up, or hit up any other alum/staff/person you might feel comfortable with!https://t.co/oZ5rU5wWi1
There was more to my week, but not much more. So I’m gonna wrap it up and knock some more things off my to do lists. Stay safe, wash your hands, and don’t let anyone tell you not to wear a mask!
This process might take a licking, but it keeps on ticking. 18 of these in 2020, huh? I actually didn’t think I could keep this up longer than 6 to 8 weeks. Anyway, this week I felt like I had just a little bit more brain capacity than I’ve had during the quarantine times. So, here we are! Let’s get the easy stuff out of the way first…
FEEDING MY HEAD
I knocked out a few more pages of RUST: A MEMOIR OF STEEL AND GRIT by Eliese Collette Goldbach and of course got distracted by a shiny thing of a non-fiction writing how-to anthology edited by Lee Gutkind, KEEP IT REAL. Okay, more than distracted; I’m about halfway through it.
FEEDING MY EARS
I heard about this a few day after the fact but once I heard it, I swear my mental fog started lifting this week: the Free Nationals doing their first on NPR Tiny Desk Concert since appearing in 2016 with Anderson .Paak and the release of their self-titled debut album, which of course I immediately got! Check it out and do yourself a favor — don’t skip ahead to the Anderson .Paak tune. You’ll be cheating yourself, trust me.
ROTTING MY BRAIN
I totally missed the boat on the anime PARANOIA AGENT when it made the rounds on Adult Swim in 2005. It’s back now and… well, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing when I saw the first episode last week. But I’m hooked now. When they call this a “psychological thriller” believe it — it really is a fucking psychological head trip of a thriller. There’s a reason this shit is on at 1:00 am.
CORONAVIRUS JOURNAL
Ugh, I hate using that term, but let’s just call this section what it is…
This year’s 4th Street Fantasy convention is postponed until next year, which I’m sure was a difficult decision for the organizers but the correct one, all things considered. It was the one and only con I’d planned on attending this year, even before the plague came upon us. They’ve offered to roll registration fees forward for 2021, which I took them up on. Also, this would’ve been the first weekend of the local annual Friends of the Library Book Sale, and yesterday would have been Free Comic Book Day. My attendance to either has been sporadic in recent years, but boy it really makes a difference when the choice not to go isn’t yours.
Aside from the impact on the social/SFFH part of my life, my adjustments to the new remote work world order have crystallized finally. Thanks to various webapps, I’m able to conduct 99% of my worklife in Ubuntu using Firefox (and a couple of official and non-official Linux versions of a couple of standalone apps) and, as usual, the rest of my life in Chrome. It’s a good enough demarcation line.
When I had no clue what I was going to be putting up for this week’s Weeknotes, I started a write-up of my work-at-home gear and workflow. But maybe that’s for another time. I will mention a new addition that finally arrived this week. It’s on the right…
I maintain this new USB mixer is not a coronavirus hobby purchase, because (a) I’ve been thinking about getting this exact model ever since I recorded readings for the ‘zine LAKESIDE CIRCUS and (b) I’ve been wanting better audio for my Zoom calls. Okay, maybe that does make me a little bit of a tool, but a different kind of tool than people who decide to start a podcast while in quarantine (which, if you believe the social medias, makes you a huge tool).
And you know what, if maybe a year or ago, I started the very beginnings of a rough idea of a sketch of what a very short monthly podcast might could possibly look like… still not a coronavirus hobby purchase!
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK
This definitely explains why my functioning is kinda shitty now, and was *even shittier* a year or so ago. https://t.co/TjIDrDX06D
That’s all I’ve got this week. Stay well, wash your hands, and if you really, truly, in good faith don’t think going outside is going to endanger you or the vulnerable in your community, wear a fucking mask at least, huh?
This week, and maybe for the foreseeable future, I’m dispensing with the pretense of following any kind of structure for these Weeknotes. It’s kind of a reflection life in the time of coronavirus. Sure, there’s a loose structure (at least for those of us fortunate enough to be able to work from home), but if I can’t keep up with other routines, there’s no point in being a stickler about something like a weekly blog post. I’m just not feeling it right now.
My time is either working or not-working. And during not-working time, I haven’t been in a headspace to do much else except mindlessly read, write, and binge watch stuff and do all the things in DESTINY 2 that I never got do when life was more normal. I’ve got some Twilight Zone draft posts queued up that I never got to finish this week. I peruse the internet and social medias as usual, and even make note of the interesting stuff like I usually do. But collecting, compiling, commenting? Eh, if I don’t have the presence of mind to stick it on Twitter, then it just leaks out of my mental RAM.
Here’s one thing that’s stuck in my mind this week: How I’m the target audience for this commercial, featuring a song that’s been in my personal rotation one way or the other since it came out.
https://youtu.be/0o5cpVdaO0A
Anything else I’ve read, parts of different memoirs, chapters out of books on writing non-fiction, the occasional article? In one ear and — well, maybe not out the other, but stuck inside my head.
I’m not going to stress about it right now. And believe it or not that’s actually progress for me. I have a tendency to fight these things, solve for them, to take any situation where I’m not sure what to do next and take stock, see what I can crack, what I can hack, what I can turn into lemonade. What I haven’t tried in awhile? Just sitting with it and seeing what comes of it. It’s hard to do that and keep working at the same time; we do what we gotta do, I guess.
It’s not like nothing report worthy happened this week. But I’m definitely experiencing that weird, distorted sense of time everyone’s been talking about. It feels like no time has past since last week’s Weeknotes. Yet, it’s seven days later. What have I been doing? I look back and, like the past couple of weeks, seem to recall only flashes.
Between last Sunday and this Sunday, it’s just been flat out at the work-from-home dayjob-in-exile. A couple of longish days in there that didn’t leave me with much left over afterward. Using my personal tools for work has been working just fine, with a few interesting issues here and there. I’m smugly doing everything my Windows-based dayjob requires using Ubuntu. But I’m balancing it out by being unofficial tech support for coworkers who aren’t as tech savvy. Makes you wonder just how much of the world continues to run thanks to Zoom’s remote control feature.
FEEDING MY HEAD
I eked a few more paragraphs out of some of the stuff in my reading queue…
Elise Collette Goldbach’s, RUST: A MEMOIR OF STEEL AND GRIT
Osama Alomar’s THE TEETH OF THE COMB & OTHER STORIES
Kit Reed’s STORY FIRST: THE WRITER AS INSIDER
ROTTING MY BRAIN
I’ve gotten back into the (bad) weekly habit of livetweeting snark at the History Channel’s THE CURSE OF OAK ISLAND and THE SECRET OF SKINWALKER RANCH. It’s a rabbit hole, to say the least.
I’ve got a To Be Watched queue, but I can be forgiven for this distraction in this time of coronavirus, right? (I mean, god knows I didn’t have an excuse any of the other times I’ve done this.)
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK
Funny how I'd automatically assume someone like Nancy Pelosi would have a better video call setup for appearing on MSNBC than anyone else would. https://t.co/IZX0bXQryI
I don't care how faithful you think you are this Easter season, you're not as faithful as my boy Ruben. If he can adjust, YOU can adjust. Stay the fuck home.https://t.co/veSMPrUGvE
I feel like I’m slowly adjusting to the new normal. No, strike that — I feel like I’m further along in the grieving process over the old normal. I’ve got something of a routine where working the dayjob from home is concerned. Aside from that, I don’t know if me and mine have a “new normal” yet, because things are still shifting. Well, we’ll see what happens this week.
Also, Thundercat’s new album IT IS WHAT IT IS is pretty great. I recommend!
This week flew by. I know I’m not the only one working from home for 8 hours and yet somehow losing track of time. It feels like most of the week is a blur of work and… not work…? I think back over the week and see only flashes. In those flashes, I seem to remember spending too much time on Twitter. I remember moving my entire Windows-based work-from-home dayjob setup to Ubuntu, basically because I could….
Other than that — aside from a little stir craziness, and the cancellation of chiropractic and dentist appointments until further notice, I’m still employed, working at 100% capacity (per a recent dayjob evaluation of everyone’s remote work capability relative to productivity), with my peeps and my cats.
Thankfully, I don’t (to my knowledge, as of the moment I send this) know anyone personally infected with COVID-19, let alone died from it. I certainly didn’t know any of these fellows who have, even though their music has been woven through my adult life. Rest in power, Wallace Roney, Ellis Marsalis, and Bill Withers!
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK
Just occurred to me: If it weren't for Gabriel García Márquez, what else would we be calling this "time of coronavirus"?
WRITING PROGRESS Longest Writing Chain This Week: 1 day for 1 days. No, no excuses but these days, thankfully, I’m not really required to have one.
FEEDING MY HEAD
When I had the brainspace, I gobbled up bits of the books I got a couple of weeks ago. I’ve also set Lydia Davis’s ESSAYS ONE down in the queue, but really to review and process all the writing process stuff she has in there. Just like her fiction, there are a lot of layers to her writing tips, and I feel like I need to read and ponder them another two or ten times.
ROTTING MY BRAIN
And this week, I do mean “rotting.” Feels a little ironic that most of it has been on the History Channel. I finally managed to catch a new episode of THE CURSE OF OAK ISLAND for me to livetweet my snark. The same with a new show called THE SECRET OF SKINWALKER RANCH. On the other hand, FORGED IN FIRE doesn’t let me down.
But, don’t get me started on EATING HISTORY. I made the mistake of keeping the TV on after one of the shows I was watching and caught this… this… this display of mediocre bros getting the kind of shot on TV that talented people of color work their asses off to get but hardly ever achieve.
Doing things in a different order this week. Because I can, that’s why.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK
For as much bullshit as comes out of my home state of Ohio these days, I still get occasionally wistful. I was sent an article from SCENE MAGAZINE (oh, I still remember how cool I thought I was in high school carting one of these around every week), “An Oral History of WMMS, Cleveland’s Legendary Radio Station”
Legendary DJ Kid Leo — as famous to me and most Clevelanders as Wolfman Jack ever was — brings to mind the city I grew up in. (If it helps you get into my head, listen to “My City Was Gone” by The Pretenders as you read this section.)
In those days, Cleveland was a joke to most in the national media and therefore to a lot of America. Our sports teams were inept, our mayors were fodder for late night talk show hosts’ monologues and hell, our river even caught on fire.
I only understood a fraction of the shit going on in Cleveland radio at the time, except for the big things like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the ROLLING STONES ballot box stuffing thing, WENZ “The End.” But names like Malrite, Ruby Cheeks, Jeff and Flash; the competition like WCNX, John Lanigan, the Stern show when it came to town — these are motes and flashes of deep, deep memories of good times I remember. (Yeah, I know it’s a Chicago song, shut up.)
Why am I waxing so nostalgic this week? Because this time period was on my mind anyway after reading this article, and others like it, on how Generation X came up with the skills to cope in this time of coronavirus.
There's a lot of truth in this. But I'd hate for people to draw the conclusion that "This makes #GenX SO well-adjusted." There was a price to be paid for a lot of us to develop this type of self-sufficiency. Some days it seems worth it. But some days, not.https://t.co/7TviY0R72S
Which, as I tweeted, wasn’t necessarily the most ideal situation. I’m not whining, though. Sure, an outsider’s picture of growing up in the ’80s on the “Mistake on the Lake” is probably close to how you envision it. But much like quarantine, isolation, remote work, fear, and uncertainty in 2020, it is what it is.
WRITING PROGRESS Longest Writing Chain This Week: 1 days for 2 days overall. What do you want, there’s a fucking global pandemic on.
FEEDING MY HEAD
I don’t need any more books, but I got them anyway. It’s been a long time since a writer’s stuff made me happy that they jumped their place in my reading queue like Osama Almoar’s.
I made my PodCastle narration debut reading Vida Cruz‘s “Odd and Ugly.” It was an joy and a privilege to read this! And yes, this was the “writing-adjacent” project I’ve been talking about the past couple of weeks.
I’d known something was up with my ThinkPad X1C Gen 6 battery since almost the day I got it, but I didn’t really register an issue until after my warranty ran out, ‘natch. But over the past 2-3 weeks, I suddenly noticed I was only getting two hours’ use out of it. Of course, I didn’t bother doing anything about it until I needed to use it to work from home and didn’t have the convenience of unplugging. Luckily, I decided fuck it, and got a replacement battery ordered before Amzn shut down non-essential stuff. So all’s well that ends well, although it looks like I probably shouldn’t have put it off for so long.
WRITING PROGRESS Longest Writing Chain This Week: 1 day, but for 3 writing days total. I know, I know. But I’m ahead of February so that’s a good thing!!
FEEDING MY EARS
This was definitely not the podcast I should’ve put on late one night thinking it would help me drift off to sleep. Instead, I was up listening to this fascinating interview with Ezra Klein and labor organizer Jane McAlevey on how the left builds power all wrong.
ROTTING MY BRAIN
Sorry I missed my weekly post of TWILIGHT ZONE (2019) reviews. I got my review of “Replay,” the third episode, up yesterday. I’ve had notes on several episodes, but just couldn’t find time to organize them during the Andromeda Strain breakout. I caught some shorter things though.
I’m convinced that if an ’80s song sounds good when you take away the ’80s production values, it’s a good song! (Though I do miss Chaka Khan singing back-up on this one.)
IN THE WILD
The “Before” picture from my first root canal. I wish the drugs and pain hadn’t hampered my ability to take pics of that last tooth on the right during the procedure.
Going to be a short one this week. Feels like I’ve been saying that a lot lately. Anyway, it doesn’t feel like I have much, if anything, to report but that’s not true. The writing-adjacent project I still can’t talk about yet is done. Just waiting on approvals and final sign offs, and then I’m sure every relevant announcement will be made.
Even though I’m a paper-pusher in the healthcare field by day, work was pretty hectic last week as you can imagine, what with the Andromeda Strain going around the world. Between that and the project I just finished, and yet another grab at another grad school opportunity… I’ve been tuckered out this weekend.
Depending on how long the Andromeda Strain lives, I may (or may not?) be at 4th Street Fantasy in June.
WRITING PROGRESS Longest Writing Chain This Week: 3 days, but for 5 days total! I’m on my way, I think.
FEEDING MY EARS
I’ve been catching up on podcasts a bit, and caught an old (from about a month ago) episode of CONAN O’ BRIEN NEEDS A FRIEND with guest Keegan Michael Key. You should listen to the whole thing but if you do nothing else, do yourself a favor and listen about 18 min, 30 sec in when they get to talking about Billy Dee Williams. Trust me!
