caffeine-free post-punk fatigue
BY NOW, IT IS ASSUMED
There is a dude at my work who prepares a batch of things for a series of meetings/presentations. There are like 9 or 10 of these meetings a year, and we are about halfway through.
Said dude has missed the deadline for a key item in the batch for all of the meetings so far. I spoke up for the first few, received vague answers but no forthcoming items, and then I dropped it. I guess if he wants to look unprepared that is totally up to him. But my inner (okay, not so inner) Mom came out big-time when he emailed the latest (incomplete) batch and included a note that said, “By now, it is assumed that [item] will not be ready in time for these meetings.” OH REALLY. ASSUMED. IS IT NOW.
I am sure his typing fingers did not intend for that to sound as rude and arrogant as it appeared to my reading eyes, but it enraged me (not that it takes much, on a workday), and served as a great reminder to re-read all emails before sending, not just for accuracy, but for that certain Jerk-Ass Tone that could slip out. It is assumed! And no free-will humans or active voice are involved—the things are just “not ready” all on their own! Amazing.
BUT IT COULD BE WORSE
Check out this spam I got AT WORK. I then “blocked sender” with extreme prejudice.
Hope you’re well. Reaching out to see if you are working on Mother’s Day gift guides or a mom hack story for staying fit and fashionable. If so, I’d love for you to consider my client [some bullshit]. Not every mom is the scented candle or PJ set type. For those who aren’t, there is [bullshit], the premier subscription service strictly for athleisure clothing. Perfect for moms who barely have time to go to SoulCyle, let alone shop for it. 🙂
(Yes: the emoticon was included.)
Right then I realized how lucky I am NOT to be working on a fucking “Mother’s Day gift guide” or “mom hack story” (fuuuuuuuuuuck). I will take a thousand tone-deaf emails from pompous dudes in my current publishing job if it means I am safe from that.
QUEER
Did you know that there is a neurological test where they ask you to name as many vegetables as you can? There is something sort of sweet and wholesome about that, although I worry a bit about cultural hegemony and hope patients are given credit for calabashes or gai lan or other things neurologists may not have heard of.
(However, if you start talking about vegetables like these you have definitely had a stroke.)
RISE OF THE MACHINES
The other night I fell asleep as usual, with a sleep timer app that is supposed to shut off the super-awesome-most-amazing-sleeping-playlist ever. It’s called Ambient Sleeping Pill, you can find it on Spotify, and it is the best if you are really picky about sleeping music like I am. High school days, when I routinely drifted off to the stern intonation of Peter Murphy or Andrew Eldritch, are long over, and now I require:
- A certain droning quality
- No pianos, no goddamn plinky plunky pianos, I am not goddamn kidding
- No vocals, no words
- VERY SLOW modulations
- No nature sounds: the water ones make me have to pee, the bird ones are always fake-sounding and on a loop and they make me mad
- Not too much high-register stuff—no tinkly “spa music” chimes, no meditation bells.
I usually set the sleep timer for about an hour. Lately the app has been choking on ITS ONE JOB (turning off the music), and in the morning I see weird error messages about how the sleep timer gave up and muted the sound as a “last resort.” I’m totally serious, the app error message sounds that desperate and apologetic, it’s really odd.
Last night somehow, and don’t ask me how, the poor little app decided that the thing to do in the middle of the night was to cede control to my Sonos speaker, which sits in the main-floor living room, and to switch over to my default (non-sleeping) playlist. The last time the Sonos in that room was used was at a party, so the volume was…quite loud.
Although my street/neighborhood is pretty quiet, it is still a street/neighborhood in a major city. There is a certain noise level that a city person is hardwired to tolerate—traffic, street conversation, someone idling at the curb with their radio on. So the loud, but somewhat faraway-sounding, music woke me up, but not in a dramatic fashion. There was a gradual awareness of “huh, that music is pretty loud.” Then I realized that the music was “I Am A Tree” by Guided By Voices, which is in my top 50 of favorite songs ever, so I dozily thought for a while about what a great song it is, and how this verse always gets me kind of emotional:
I’m planning to see
I’m planning to feel you all over me
So climb up my trunk and build on your nest
Come and get the sap out of me
I am a tree!
Fruitless and free!
No symmetry!
Touch me and see!
Then, and this is where it gets a little weird, I thought that it was probably my next-door neighbor kicking out the jams at 1 am. He is a musician and was once in a Chicago-famous post-rock band that I am not going to name here, because I don’t want a whole bunch of cerebral dreamy indie-rock-snob fanboys to sleuth out my neighborhood and start hanging around. I was warm and sleepy and mentally congratulating him (and myself) for having good taste in music, and also sort of congratulating myself for being so chill with the fact that Guided By Voices was blasting into the darkened quiet. I’m not going to call the cops, no sir! Not for a good noise like that one!
It was only when another song started playing (Lonely Island’s “Dick in a Box”) that I realized oh wait, this is MY playlist, I’M the asshole blasting music at 1 am, and how creepy that apps made it all autonomously happen, somehow. The robots are coming/the robots are here! If I come home and the Roomba is demanding the right to vote I will not be surprised.
—mimi smartypants welcomes her mechanical overlords.