“Dump when he dumps” and other bad parenting advice
The dump in précis, for those of you too busy to read: Update on life🧒—> Big announcement📢—> Celeb Divorce🥀—>YOLO🍾—> Aliens🛸—> Trees🪵—> Sam’s consumption📚
I need to come clean on something about parenting. We’ve reached the point in Eliot’s life where he makes it nearly impossible to have a phone call with someone. In the early days of his life, and throughout most of the pandemic, calling a friend or family member was an excellent way to kill 20 minutes. Eliot would coo and giggle and smile, and the person on the other end of the FaceTime would offer free entertainment while providing a momentary break from the sometimes painful silence that is parenting.
Fellow parents, you know what I mean. Avoiding screens means you leave the TV off, and sometimes it’s just too much effort to find something to listen to that your child will not reject. And so you sit in the cacophony of bad battery-powered musical toys that numb your brain and child-like wonder that accompanies baby-powered play. Sometimes it’s nice to speak to someone. And that’s why FaceTime was so cool.
Hello fellow human! What news from the mark?
These phone calls were literal lifelines to break up the monotony of listening to “The Animal Fair.” But now, Eliot has moved simultaneously to the “I am bored by the person in the phone” and “give me the phone immediately” stages of development.
I do not know where famed child psychologist Jean Piaget would say this behavior falls in his stages. For me, it’s firmly in the “Too much effort to call someone now” stage.
So I am sorry if you were looking for an update on Eliot. You’re not getting it via phone anymore.
He’s got teeth. The sharp ones are popping through on the bottom as we speak.
He doesn’t really talk yet. He understands pretty much everything we ask him to do. “Get the book.” “Find the ball.” “Can you get me shoes?” “Do you want water?” Easy. Just hasn’t turned any of those commands into words himself yet. He loves hiding and has recently taken up dancing.
The big news on the Eliot front is that he’s going to be a big brother in a matter of weeks. If you’ve read this far into this dump, you likely are someone who I would have told this news to had we spoken on the phone, which, as we just covered, I don’t do anymore.
So yeah, the answer to the riddle from a few dumps ago: April Dumps→ May Bumps. We should have a baby by Mid-May or early June. There are dozens of articles that explain that this transition from one to two is a lot harder than anyone ever really says. So, I guess we have that to look forward to! As of today, Leen is at “full term” which, for all you “we don’t have a baby yet” readers means he could come any day now.
Whether this baby, who we are tentatively calling Hannibal Heath Hasler (no, not really), allows us to make phone calls… to be determined. Make sure you don’t miss the call if he does. We’re calling for a much-needed break. It’s literally a call for help.
If you want to talk dump content or second baby updates, you know where to find me.
And now these:
During the halcyon days of dumps long past, I used this space to praise Kanye West. I distinctly recall where I was the first time I listened to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (Shoutout Coffee News Cafe on Grand). I remember the joy I had hearing the lyric, “Have you ever had sex with a pharaoh?/Ahhhhh, put the pussy in a sarcophagus.” I remember being late to a party because I was watching the Runaway extended version.
Nearly a decade on, the shine from the Kanye glow has grown dull. His recent antics and outbursts highlight him more as a pot-stirrer rather than a visionary. Less a “voice of a generation” and more of a “has-been jerk-off with an ego problem.”
Arguably, his removal from the pantheon of pop culture is felt most when considering his role in serving to legitimize the Kardashian empire. Now with their star still in some sort of ascent and his waning and with Kim filing for divorce, it’s a good time to do an autopsy on their relationship. This piece in Vulture has you covered.
In my opinion, this was a celebrity couple that made perfect sense. I thought: Kimye could make it. Two individuals driven by fame and ego and in possession of more self-confidence than seemingly healthy.
Maybe their relationship was a bit like Icarus in that sense. They flew too close to the sun, and the wings melted off. And here we are. He, with a failed presidential run and one too many MAGA hats. She with the upcoming premiere of the 20th and final season of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, in which she documents and gives narrative to the divorce. For better or worse, she is now legitimate within the pages of magazines that used to laugh at her and in an economy where it seems like every day a Kardashian makes headlines as they climb the Forbes charts.
Who knows where this leaves Kanye. His embarrassment after the infamous grammy situation with Taylor Swift led to the wonders of MBDTF; whether he can recreate that sort of musical genius again remains to be seen. His recent attempts have been tepid and uninspiring. Maybe, like many artists before him, he simply needed a break-up to find inspiration again. Anyway, long story short, relive the Kim and Kanye era.
Yolo change jobs
I am not sure that any story that earnestly describes a movement’s rallying cry as “YOLO” can be taken too seriously, yet here we are. Popularized by Drake a decade ago, #YOLO represented the sort of “fuck it” decision making associated with taking another shot at the bar, spending $300 bucks on that trip to see that girl you thought you might be able to get together, or like not studying for a final and winging it.
Now YOLO has moved into meme status. It’s a shorthand for “Probably going to regret this, but yooooo!!!!”
Maybe then it does work for this story which details the rate that people in my age band (Generation, if you will) are eschewing their pre-pandemic plans and paths and blazing a new trail in some new field. If we follow the meme-ification of the concept, perhaps these people are leaving their jobs for better #swag at another gig.
Many who are making the switch say, “the pandemic changed my priorities” and “I realized I didn’t have to live like this.”
Head over to your LinkedIn. Do you notice a glut of connections writing heartfelt thank yous to their former teams? Have they left traditional education to go work for an ed-tech start-up? Have they left the cozy world of PR in exchange for a bitcoin trading platform? I wonder if this is less of a “pandemic changed my priorities” as much as it is: I realized that I didn’t love what I was doing, and I am still young enough to try something new, so this could be a perfect opportunity to try.
According to two studies cited in the piece, between 40 and 50 percent of workers are planning to or considering looking for new work in 2021. It’s been true for a while that this economy is not the same as the one my parents grew into. The “get an entry-level job, get a promotion and some raises, rise to mid-management, move to the suburbs, raise a family and retire after 35 years in the same company” is no longer the path familiar to this generation’s workers. The pandemic may have pushed people to look for new work and new opportunities, but I don’t think it caused the shift as much as it exacerbated it.
People are looking for something more than just “work,” but unfortunately, “work” still pays the bills and mortgage. So if you’re going to have to work, you may as well find something you enjoy doing, or at worst, find something you don’t hate. If you are perhaps searching for new employment, maybe you should get into the Pokemon card rating business...
If I asked you to rank your favorite movies featuring aliens, what would be your top three? There are many ways to look at this question and, as such, many options for a top three. Alien, Star Wars, ET, Men in Black, Signs, Arrival, Lilo & Stitch, Mars Attack, Starship Troopers, They Live, Coneheads… the list goes on!
Truth be told, space is not one of the areas of film or television that I really dig too much. I did enjoy reading the Red Rising book series, which is set in space and features a stratified society based on color (the reds at the bottom, with the golds atop the pyramid.), but space is a mood I have to be in to enjoy. I’ve tried watching For All Mankind and didn’t make it far though rumors of “guns on the moon” seemed interesting. I passed on the Gosling in space movie, and even the Mandalorian… was a bit boring for my tastes at times.
And here I am writing about aliens because it seems we’re hitting a moment in history where… it’s not an If but a When. Here is a very long story in the New Yorker detailing the history of UFOs that basically presented enough evidence for me to conclude that they exist.
Here’s my imprecise metaphor for why I believe in life beyond now. You know how sometimes a woman comes forward with a very plausible, highly likely, incredibly detailed account of the time some creep assaulted her? There are always people on the “other side” (ed note: shitty side to take) who say: SHE’S JUST DOING THIS FOR THE ATTENTION! And then the discourse somehow morphs into like… “Is she actually she just doing this for attention?” instead of the discourse being about the dude who def did what she says they did?
So this attention thing: Is the logic that… the woman woke up on a Tuesday morning and decides: “Today’s my day to get attention for being assaulted, thereby putting my life on display and becoming a talking point for shit heels like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens? I can’t wait!” Of course, this idea doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny.
So yeah, same idea w/ regards to aliens. Many people who have come forward over the last 60 years are pilots and military personnel. They know they are about to be laughed out of the building, but they do it anyway because they think it’s essential. And well, now here we are, with the DOD admitting UFOs are real and politicians like Marco Rubio and Harry Reid demanding answers. The extended version is convincing. I recommend it.
“Virtually all astrobiologists suspect that we are not alone. Seth Shostak, the senior astronomer at the seti Institute, has wagered that we will find incontrovertible proof of intelligent life by 2036.” So by my count, you have fifteen years to come to terms with this information. I don’t plan on doing much different between now and then. It’s just good to be prepared.
The Price of Lumber
Seems like everyone I talk to wants to talk about the housing market or the lumber market, or how the lumber market is causing stress on the housing market. I think most of us have enough economic understanding to see why wood is so hard to find right now. More people are home. More people want to build something. Yadda yadda yadda, simple supply and demand. However if you take a minute and think about it: what is the root of the problem? It’s not like trees went missing. Why the fuck can’t I get enough boards to do my deck?
My brother just told me that we missed out on ordering pastries for Mother’s Day because they’re already sold out. Mother’s Day is in four days. I had to place an order for pastries four days early for a second tier holiday. That is not mother-slander. But this day is not Christmas, Easter or the Fourth of July. Why are pastries sold out four days in advance? I dunno.
I think lumber is in the same boat. The problem is not the raw material, but rather the processing. According to a VOX article, the issue isn’t trees. It’s turning trees in timber (felled tree) and timber into lumber. We don’t have enough places to make this transformation happen. When the pandemic started, people in the lumber industry dialed back production and processing. Like the rest of the economy, they expected demand to crawl to a halt. They laid people off, they shut down mills and they settled in for the long wait. Only instead of crawling a halt, the desire to add an extra room to my house or re-do my deck sprinted to never seen before levels. The lumber industry was caught flat-footed and unprepared.
By one estimation, it takes two years to build a sawmill and get it operating. Despite demand for the product, you can’t just habitat-for-humanity a working mill. And so prices skyrocket and demand booms and supply crashes. We’ve simply hit the point where every piece of wood on the market is accounted for and there isn’t some magic bullet in the chamber. In the Pacific Northwest, there is a shortage of qualified lumber due to bugs, laws and wildfires. In the South, there is a glut of timber but a dearth of sawmills.
There is no vaccine for this problem. One just has to wait for the deck refurb. Lumber contracts are still north of $1000 all the way thru November, so this issue isn’t soon over. Speculation is that if it hit those highs in the “slow” months that this summer could be even worse as people truly take stock of their home condition and decide to plunk down the down payment for the materials now. Better to secure a spot in the line now than to wait for the line to get shorter only to find that it’s gotten longer. You might think that people would put their projects on hold with the price of lumber being what it is, but that simply isn’t the case. The projects march on, price be damned.
If you want to know more, check out the story here. It has some funny Lumberjack tiktok stars. Would recommend.
Things in Consumption:
Here are a few of the things that I’ve been pouring into my brain.
A trio of podcast episodes about “cancel culture.” The pod itself is called: “You’re Wrong About.” This premise, which I learned about via Twitter, is two hosts explore something from our childhood that we “experienced” but probably didn’t understand fully. The first episode details the rise of “political correctness” through the 80s and 90s and reframes the idea of who truly began “canceling” anyone. The second episode looks at the Dixie Chicks and the Iraq War. It introduced me to the idea of anti-fandom, and all the bullshit associated with it. In case you found yourself wondering if Toby Keith was a cool dude, this episode will dissuade you of that notion. The third episode isn’t out yet, but it is the one where they will truly tackle cancel culture. But first they wanted to lay the ground work.
Recently I finished the JK Simmons show “Counterpart” which was complicated, featured two of everyone, set in Berlin and had lots of subtitles and gun fights. I am 2/3 of the way through the Netflix series, also German, called Dark, which features multiples of everyone, sometimes in triplicate, lots of subtitles, is set in a German forest community where people keep going missing and has the iconic line “When is Mikkel?” Anyway, if you also like weird confusing German shows, then you may be pumped to read about “1899” a weird, German show set on a boat en route to America in 1899 when something happens. It’s from the producers of Dark so we can expect it to be awesome and very confusing. Can’t wait. I hear weird German shows are just what the doctor ordered when you’re up late (or early) with a baby.
I just finished reading Octavia Butler’s Kindred for an upcoming book club. I have thoughts. I will save them for book club. Back in March, FX optioned the novel and will turn it into a mini-series.
After Larry McMurtry’s recent death, I decided to take one of his novels for a spin. I am about 30% of the way through his novel “All of My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers.” The book lead me to learn more about LM so I found a Texas Monthly profile of him from 2016 when he was 80. In it, he gave some good advice on writing. “What about process? Did he ever get stuck developing a plot? Seize up sometimes before a blank page?—he sighed. “I just write,” he replied. “You either do it, or you don’t.” Aspirational stuff there. If you’
So yeah, big news out of this one was that we’re going to be adding a baby to the mix here any day now. I’ve suggested you change jobs on account of a YOLO way of life. I updated you about why you might want to go ahead and order the lumber for the new fence now even though prices are high. We confirmed the presence of Extra Terrestrials and I shared some things I am watching, listening to and reading.
I reckon that if the baby comes any day now, I may have less time to do the writing, as Larry McMurtry put it. So in that case, the dumps could be silent for a minute. Fear not. If you don’t hear from me, you can call and you can act as a virtual baby sitter for Moses Morgan Hasler (no) while I sing the wheels on the bus to Eliot.
