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Prepare For The Ultimate Gaslighting

Ben and I were just discussing this last night.

From Medium:

From one citizen to another, I beg of you: take a deep breath, ignore the deafening noise, and think deeply about what you want to put back into your life. This is our chance to define a new version of normal, a rare and truly sacred (yes, sacred) opportunity to get rid of the bullshit and to only bring back what works for us, what makes our lives richer, what makes our kids happier, what makes us truly proud. We get to Marie Kondo the shit out of it all. We care deeply about one another. That is clear. That can be seen in every supportive Facebook post, in every meal dropped off for a neighbor, in every Zoom birthday party. We are a good people. And as a good people, we want to define — on our own terms — what this country looks like in five, ten, fifty years. This is our chance to do that, the biggest one we have ever gotten. And the best one we’ll ever get.

We can do that on a personal scale in our homes, in how we choose to spend our family time on nights and weekends, what we watch, what we listen to, what we eat, and what we choose to spend our dollars on and where. We can do it locally in our communities, in what organizations we support, what truths we tell, and what events we attend. And we can do it nationally in our government, in which leaders we vote in and to whom we give power. If we want cleaner air, we can make it happen. If we want to protect our doctors and nurses from the next virus — and protect all Americans — we can make it happen. If we want our neighbors and friends to earn a dignified income, we can make that happen. If we want millions of kids to be able to eat if suddenly their school is closed, we can make that happen. And, yes, if we just want to live a simpler life, we can make that happen, too. But only if we resist the massive gaslighting that is about to come. It’s on its way. Look out.

Read the whole thing here. It’s worth your time.

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Vintage Audio Porn

Teac A-700 Elcaset Deck, 1976-77

Elcaset was a format ahead of its time, and unfortunately supplanted by improvements in regular cassette technology that it was designed to replace. It (and cassettes) were ultimately killed off by the arrival of cheap digital recording, both in the form of CD-R and Minidisc in the 90s.

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Further Adventures in Cluelessness

Skype me Daddy!

And the beat goes on.

It’s said some people as adults have the awareness of a typical three-year old; i.e. their awareness extends to a three foot radius around them and then abruptly ends).

About six weeks ago—before the madness started—we got a request to upgrade the a/v equipment in the main conference rooms on three floors. We were all busy at the time so it got put on the back burner and life went on. Well, today we got an email from one of those perpetually-clueless individuals asking when these upgrades were expected to be completed because, “we have meetings with the public coming up.”

Excuse me? Meetings with who? Who is this “public” and who, exactly, is going to be physically coming back into the office to conduct these meetings?

My colleagues and I maintain a group chat via Skype during the day, and even before anyone said anything, I could hear their collective eyes rolling. Finally, my supervisor’s boss said, “I. just. can’t ,” immediately followed by, “I’ll take care of it.” Less than a minute later we all received a cc’d email to the user reminding her that there was a spending freeze in place for all non-essential purchases and laying out exactly why this project was non-esssential and now officially on hold for the foreseeable future.

I swear that some people—even in the midst of this crisis—continue to think only about about themselves and their needs; that everything is still “business as usual.”

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I Broke Down Last Night

I thought I’d been handling this self-quarantine, lockdown, whatever-you-wanna-call-it thing pretty well. I’m a homebody at heart, so I figured going into this not leaving the house lifestyle would be a walk in the park.

Well, that was proven wrong last night. It started with a mild headache yesterday afternoon and progressed to an upset stomach. Ben started making dinner and the smells that were coming into the den sent my headache into overdrive. I wanted to wretch. I told him I wasn’t at all interested in eating at the time and closed the door.

After Ben had eaten I ventured into the kitchen, where he joined me. I turned to him and started crying. He came in for a hug and I just let loose. I didn’t cry when my mom died. I didn’t cry when my dad passed. And yet now—for seeming no reason at all, I lost it.

Amazingly after that good cry, the headache was gone as well as my upset stomach.

In his wisdom, Ben suggested we both get out of the house for a while, either together or separately. Cabin Fever was setting in.  And you know I’m stressed when I reach the point I can’t spend one more second in front of a screen of any kind, which was exactly where I was.

We didn’t make it out last night because it was too late by the time I’d finished dinner, but when we woke today Ben said, “We need to take a drive.”

Since the world is on lockdown, we really couldn’t—nor did we want to—go anywhere that we’d run into masses of humanity, so we settled on one of the public spaces still open: White Tank Mountain Regional Park.

Back in the early 1970s after moving into our new home at 47th Avenue and Bethany Home Road, my family and I had an unobstructed view of the White Tank Mountains to the west. I often said that once I had my own car, my first destination would be driving out west to see them up close.

You can almost make out the White Tank Mountains through the haze on the horizon. That view doesn’t exist any more. (That’s my grandfather’s 1955 T-Bird that he conveniently got rid of right before I got my drivers’s license.)

It took 42-some years to do it, but I finally did when I drove out a few years ago to photograph the White Tank Library. While there I contemplated driving into the park, but for a variety of reasons decided to put it off for another time. It took an additional three and a half years beyond that, but I finally fulfilled my teenage dream of visiting those mountains today.

Deal with it. This is the first new car I’ve had in thirteen years, and goddamnit, I’m going to photograph the shit out of it.

We both felt much better—much relieved—when we arrived back home this afternoon. Ready to face another week of self-quarantine…

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