Motivated Mayhem

The Runaways (2010) is a movie about the blonde chick Joan Jett used to hang out with ¹Cherie Currie actually wrote the book this movie is based on, and was the lead singer in one of the first widely popular all-female rock bands. So I have all the respects. But I think she’d make this same joke. before she was in a good band. In it Kristen Stewart uses queerness and cigarettes to be cooler than everyone else. I assume that’s what real-life Joan Jett does too. Michael Shannon does what appears to be a feature-length Bill Hader sketch about a music producer. Dakota Fanning features heavily in the cover art but just like her character in the movie ²In the beginning of the film the music producer shows Joan Jett marketing photos of a thin young blonde woman in a bikini standing in front of a motor cycle, points at her crotch, and says we need “this”. They then recruit Currie because she matches the look and eventually produce such photos for their own band. The cover art for the movie is … Continue reading that’s mostly a scam to meet marketing expectations.

It’s a good film though. The people in it are not particularly good to each other, and many times they are willing to use each other, but they’re surprising honest. Honest about everyone’s intentions evnr when they’re shitty, honest about the process of marketing a band, honest about how none of the “success” translates even into temporary well-being let alone a good life. There’s enough good music to make it interesting but it doesn’t get bogged down in being a tribute playlist. And the meta-narrative is carefully done, matching the tone of the movie and avoiding an easy spiral into slapstick. Do watch, if you have the chance. Particularly if you’re into queer musicians.

Dog is still in the hospital. He’s up and about but due to COVID he doesn’t get visits. Hopefully he’s home on Wednesday, but we won’t know until we know. It’s a little lonely without him, and I’m sorry he was sick (and that he has extra cancer), but it has also been a lower-stakes practice for when we murder him. Shanda was able to imagine that having good activity memories would be valuable ³Valuable not just for remembering Dog, but also for remembering me. I’m not planning to die in the immediate future, but I do hope for a life where we can have less anxiety about doing new things together. Someday I will be gone and you’ll want to be able to miss those experiences. Not that the quiet times at home are worthless, but you’ll … Continue reading, which might make it easier to try some before he goes.

Moving is getting closer. The bank is still having a hissy fit about, I guess accounting? It’s not super clear and they are pretty bad about asking a question and then not listening to the answer. Assuming that all gets worked out though, I think the actual house part is on track. There’s a plumbing issue that will be expensive to fix, but not one I need to deal with this month and we negotiated a better price on the house to make up for it. So hopefully we’ll be moving in the first week of August. I’ve included an image of our bathroom [fig 2] just so I can tell you about this fun feature – the window opens down into the wall, like in a car door. Also it’s purple, my favorite; I’m excited that several of the rooms already have colors and not just bland nothing walls.

Packing and purging has been hard on Shanda. I expected it to be, and I’m prepared to be supportive, but I’m also prepared to haul all the junk we don’t need out in the middle of the night just to be done with it. Hoarding feels that demand we move half empty condiments and that we “properly” dispose of old clothes no one wants are sort of a barrier to low-stress moving. But progress is happening. And we’ve turned out house into sort of a Dr. Seuss story with a bunch of 3″ colored dots on all the big items, marking the things were not taking and the destinations for the things we are. I’m relieved to have less stuff, and I hope I can teach Shanda to feel that freedom too.

I’ve queued up a bunch of things for my therapist this week, including significant challenges to their general theraputic model. I’ve got them to agree to read my emails as prep for sessions, which has helped us stay engaged in topics for more than one week. Hopefully it works here, and doesn’t just trigger more breakup song. I think I’ve tamped that down though, by getting my therapist to admit that if I had told them what I thought I needed a year ago they would have told me to find another therapist – that should make them feel guilty about an impulse to withdraw this week. I also provided literally a textbook about what I want to have happen, and I think that might help.

I got unprompted comms from M this week, and an extra-large amount of good talks last week. I’m so proud of all the things you’ve been doing to take care of yourself and make your life better. I hope you’re able to continue some of that as your usual life comes back into swing this fall. I’m also honored that you decided to share with me, particularly about things I know have been hard for you to think or talk about. I love you a bunch and it makes me so happy when I get to hear about your life.

The day job has been crazy. We’ve had 4x the normal support volume, mostly about a single CVE that just became public. It’s not our bug – it’s an interoperability issue between Tomcat and httpd – but it’s a pretty bad compromise and it affects old enough versions to make banks ⁴I’m not saying that I have a whole list of compromises for critical and high-privilege networked computer systems used extensively in finance infrastructure from consumer banking to high-speed trading, but I am saying that if you’re planning to Mr. Robot you should DM me first. freak out. I’m mostly recovered though; I’ve got a bunch of SRs but I think I’m done re-re-re-publishing customer comms about the issue. And I’m well past done doing any internal handholding about it.

Chemical escapism has been particularly attractive the past few weeks. Lots of things were making stress very high. I could still use a good drug day – perhaps after the move. This week and last I’ve been at normal usage, but I’m also tempted to break my days-long fast right now before bed (even though it will delay sleep onset) because my brain would like to be a little less present. Here’s hoping both my own stress and household conditions continue to improve. And here’s a note to self about resupplying some more exotic drugs for a neurotransmitter-based vacation in a few weeks.

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.

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