little surfer

Once upon a time I got a request if I wanted to interview a band. It was quite short notice, right before their show in Berlin. It must have been around 2013/2014. I remember the guy at the promotion firm fondly. However I said yes and went out to “Wild at Heart” an excellent venue in Berlin. Here I interviewed two members of Larry and his Flask in the room next to the stairs, while all the other members were at a radio station. I don't know if I still have that interview lying around somewhere. I should check.

Anyhow their 2013 record By the Lamplight starts with a a song called Pandemonium. It always strikes me as funny to think of songs that get stuck and songs that leave the head after a while. I could probably sing along to a lot of By the Lamplight. But Pandemonium? That first line comes to me often in my work as a teacher.

I have seen them twice. Once at “Wild at Heart” and once years later at Cassiopeia. Both shows were sweaty affairs, fun and energizing. An amazing band.

I'll never forget how they offered me a joint in that room next to the stairs during the interview. Oh to be a rock star.

Here have some punky emo stuff full of feelings.

Or how about some desperate screams and a lot of feelings?

Or some angry men being rightfully angry.

Whatever floats your boat. It is out there and very good.

I like Low Island a bunch. I have interviewed the singer Carlos twice and both times were excellent conversations. Here is a look at how their record “bird” got made. And now I shall listen to it again. Still mad as heck, that I missed their Berlin show because I was sick.

When I search for “Drinking Song” in my music library I get two hits. One is The Divine Comedy with “A Drinking Song” which is an excellent ode to being a little bit drunk. It is much more joyful than the one by Abi Reinold, which is tagged #sadcore for a reason.

And then I find Keep Drinking by the Drinking Boys and Girls Choir which is amazing and fun, fast paced punk music from South Korea.

Three very very different tapes of music. All pretty great in my opinion. Enjoy.

OH they have a cover of Linda Linda! LOVE that song.

This morning I grabbed a comic I hadn't seen for a while from my shelves. It is called The Hchom Book and it is by Marian Churchland. I first read their work way back in the olden days, when Elephantmen still came out via image comics and she illustrated an issue. Then I lost sight, found the Hchom Book and it slipped out of my periphery again. Here we are then, I am a newly minted patron and excited to see more of Churchlands excellent drawings.

Aside from that I spent some time at the sea. It was cold and seeing the Baltic ocean actually somewhat frozen over was amazing. Almost slipping on every other walkways was less great, but all in all I recommend it.

I spent some money on good tunes! Bandcamp Friday called to me and I spent my budget on three albums/eps.

Power Snatch is a new band wit Hayley Williams of Paramore fame. a great little EP. The Cult Object record is fantastic. I am not yet completely convinced by the new Joyce Manor album. Will get some more spins.

Finally finished Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell):My Decade Fighting for the Labor Movement by Jane McAlevey and Bob Ostertag. It was great to read about that particular set of struggles and it really gave me some excellent food for thought. These three quotes are separate.

Whole-worker organizing begins with the recognition that real people do not live two separate lives, one beginning when they arrive at work and punch the clock and another when they punch out at the end of their shift. The pressing concerns that bear down on them every day are not divided into two neat piles, only one of which is of concern to unions. At the end of each shift workers go home, through streets that are sometimes violent, past their kids’ crumbling schools, to their often substandard housing, where the tap water is likely unsafe.

John Gaventa who would repeat over and over, “Dogs get trained, Jane, people get educated”

Ultimately, this was where I got my ideas about what a union is and what it means to be antiracist. It’s where I learned that the truly poor deserve the dignity of housing in a nice neighborhood, that actions matter, that corporations should pay their fair share, that bucking the Democratic Party power structure is no big deal, that unions and environmentalists can work together and win, and that progressive social change cannot be made without a leadership ready to take risks.

Just a great book and a great jumping off point for me and my possible relation to my own union. From there I went to the latest episode of Heart Reacts with Kelly Hayes and started reading Let this radicalize You.

possibility is worth it.

Now I have one more day before school starts up again. And I don't quite feel prepared. But I have good music. I have good books. I am meeting a friend tomorrow and I had amazing dinner at my parents tonight. It'll go it's way. <3

There is an interview with Asha Lorenz from the band sorry. It sits on my recorder and I have not edited it. I am running away from it. She says some heavy stuff in there (at least that is how I remember it.). And maybe that is all bogus my mind made up listening to a person talking about the important role alcohol plays in her creative work. Cosplay is a great force of an album.

It has a lethargic bite that keeps it's teeth in. And sometimes it slaps you with a line and there is a feeling that stays. I like it a lot and I don't listen to it very often. I am listening to it right now.

So I guess I'll make it happen this week. I'll edit the damn interview. And maybe I was wrong. Maybe my head made much more out of it then it was. I hope so.

How is this song so very good?

EDIT: It was not so bad. Did the edit. Finishing it all until Monday. Comes out Wednesday next week.

The ground is iced over multiple times. Today was a strike day. Striking for better pay and better everything for people who work in education. I ate nice pastries, had a good coffee, watched a bunch of cycling videos featuring pretty people, stood on the street among people clad in the red colors of the union and will interview people from a band called The Hirsch Effekt at 4pm. A good day.

What else is life for if not that? So much comfort, all kinds of media and hobbies to choose from, so many tutorials on how to learn them, and you want to be a robot who is not beholden to the enjoyment of it all, unfazed by the flow state, but will check off an acceptable time allotment of it each day, and not a minute more. It’s like you dispense it like a medicine, in a carefully calibrated dose, just enough to keep you going mentally, but not enough so as to seem lazy or too invested in things deemed silly or unproductive. (via ava)

Today

• so much grading
• am head empty from the weekend

Reading

I have been reading Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell): My Decade Fighting for the Labor Movement by by Jane McAlevey and Bob Ostertag and it is fascinating! It fits then that “Nearly 15K NYC nurses begin strike at hospitals in Manhattan, the Bronx”. The whole union thing is so wild. Great and wild. I am struggling to compare it to the teachers union here in Germany and we come off as wimps compared to these amazing people. Great book!

I finished Enshittification by Cory Doctorow. Am well written and low to the ground explainer on how/why things are how they are. Terrifying and oh my goodness people can be such shites.

There’s a name for this strategy, coined by the librarian-theorist Fobazi Ettarh: vocational awe. Ettarh uses this term to describe the weaponization of workers’ sense of duty, especially to the public those workers serve. For Ettarh, vocational awe is why teachers, nurses, hospice care workers, and, of course, librarians accept poor pay and conditions without rebelling. They feel a sense of duty to their students, patients, and patrons, and their bosses don’t, and everyone knows it. So long as workers believe that their boss would rather harm the people they love and care for rather than increase their pay, they are held hostage by their own sense of duty.

Also read Accidental Shepherd: How a California Girl Rescued an Ancient Mountain Farm in Norway by Liese Greensfelder. Very good. Almost like a diary, well written, beautiful places and harrowing experiences.

But you know what? The mountains aren’t going away. They’ll be here if we ever need to use them again.

To-Do

• grading all over everything – deciding on how and why and then no one will explain anything to the kids, because that conversation happened a few months ago and was not about those particular grades
• add a one-page Dungeon to the Tock Tock Press site on this site. -prep classes for the week

Status

The TL;DR on functioning in a capitalist world is to move a little slower, with a little more intention. Your dollar helps people stay in business. Be careful where you put it. I’m not saying it’s easy. As I told at the top of the story, I shamefully let frustration get to me and I took the easy way out. This’ll happen. But every time we keep doing it, we get closer and closer to having no other options than having to shop at a company store run by white supremacists. (via Mike Monteiro)

Burnout shifted its meaning: from a symptom experienced by people struggling to change society to one experienced by people trying too hard to succeed within it. (via A Working Library)

Today: – Are We Participating in a Thing That Is Not Even Working?’ Chris Gethard on the end of the middle-class comedy job. / Podcast Version – Coffee or not

To Do: – finish building the math exam for Friday. Still need to write the last tasks and do points – work on my entry for the TWG Game Jam

STATUS: Should I not have coffee in the morning? Music is on. Freedom is active. Now to open word and the Worksheet Crafter and get going.

Our embassies should be closed and our diplomats expelled, our games and tournaments boycotted, including the upcoming World Cup and Summer Olympics. And everybody else should be issuing travel advisories to the US in an attempt to crash our tourism industry. Everything the international community did to Russia after it invaded Ukraine should be done to us now that we’ve invaded Venezuela and are trying to install a sham government there.

Elie Mystal in the Nation