Category: Journal

I’m writing today from my home office. I haven’t been able to say that since…2001? In any case, it’s been a while and it’s nice not to be dragging Nicole to work with me and making her put up with whatever stress I’m feeling. My blind kitty has adjusted marvelously and he’s sleeping in his bed next to my desk. This isn’t bad. So, let me briefly go over how we got here. This summer, during the lockdown, our cashflow was actually pretty good since we weren’t (and still aren’t) going anywhere near restaurants. We figured that we needed a bigger place than the one bedroom apartment we were in if I was going to be working from home for the foreseeable future. We started looking at two bedroom apartments and the lighbulb lit up. “We can’t afford to live here, but what if we bought a house close to here, close enough that I could come into town a few times a week? Was our credit good enough? Could we afford it? Were there any places nearby where we would be happy living? At the time we started looking, the answers were “no,” “no,” and “who knows?” But, with decent cashflow, we were making inroads on the credit. We started looking at some of the towns around here and found some that would work (and many more that wouldn’t-anything requiring that I get on the interstate wasn’t going to work). Then we found a place we really liked and everything to a lot more real. We decided to cash in our savings, get our credit card usage under control, and make sure we had enough on hand for putting a chunk down and then moving. It takes a while for the credit reporting places to show the changes and, in that time, we missed out on the place we’d found (we dubbed it “The Parsonage” because it was between a church and a library and had no neighbors at all…sigh). Back to the drawing board. Unfortunately, a lot of other people were having the same thoughts we were and prices were going up at a crazy rate. We found some great places in bad locations, so lousy places in good locations, and some great places in great location that were just out of our range. It was getting frustrating as it felt like the window was closing. But then (and I can’t believe I’m starting a paragraph with “but then…”), Nicole found a house that had been listed an hour earlier. She set up a showing for the next day and then told me “I found it.” Sure enough, she had: A house in a town we liked that had a style we loved and at a price we could swing. We met the realtor at the house and within about 5 minutes we were ready to make an offer. It was a good thing we didn’t wait as there were several offers on the first day, but ours was accepted, so…huzzah! The next bit is crazy. We were pre-approved for the amount, but we now had to get down to locking in an interest rate and…holy smokes, interest rates are nothing right now. I do not have what anyone would mistake for good credit and we still came in south of 3 percent. We started giggling because that was beyond our wildest hopes (with the caveat that we have few wild hopes regarding percentages). And here we are, a month later, and we’re in the place and it feels pretty great. We got incredibly lucky in that a lot of dominoes fell precisely where we needed them to to make this work. The long and the short of it is that we’ll be paying substantially less on our mortgage than we were paying in rent on our one bedroom apartment. We got really lucky. After a crazy, awful, frustrating, scary year, we seem to have landed no only on our feet but in a better life as well. Things could have been very different. I am not particularly deft with money (those of you who know me well may enjoy your chuckle at the degree to which I am understating things) and I was afraid that I had permanently locked myself into renting. It can be cheaper to own, but you have to be able to save money to buy and it’s hard to do that when you’re renting…it’s a hell of a treadmill. I’ll leave with this: If you have an opportunity and urge to buy, or you are in a position to refinance, now is a great time to do so. I’d never paid much attention to interest rates (see above paragraph) but apparently they’re as low now as they’ve been in the last fifty years. A very generic picture of the back yard and some beautiful sunlight.

So, there’s a lot going on, huh? Before I get heavy on ya, here’s Jerry Jeff covering Tom Waits because you deserve something nice: So, I’m going on very little sleep because my kitty’s not doing so great. The good news is it’s mostly a lot of little things rather thing one big and very bad thing. When they’re 17 years old or so, you take what wins you can get. He’s got conjunctivitis in one eye, he’s got detached retinas (which we knew, but still) but there’s no pressure from anything nasty growing behind the eyes, so that’s good. But, he’s got hypertension and a little infection too. The net of this is that he’s now on multiple medications and he’s not super duper happy about anything and he’s not terribly energetic right now. But, he’s doing better and starting to act like himself again, so that makes the three vet visits, including one to an emergency 24 hour clinic, well worth it. The (other) old man in all his glory. There was an election. Joe Biden won the election. We’ll see what happens next, but I would regard all threats as serious and keep an eye on things. I’m not comfortable yet that the result will be accepted. In another good result, Austin approved the transit bill which means more trains. This is good news. It won’t do me any good personally, but it’ll be very good for a lot of people and well worth the investment. John Stuart Mill would approve. I’m just exhausted right now. In addition to work (trending positive), the cat (same), and the nation (mostly positive with a chance of disaster), we closed on a house today. Somehow I don’t think I’ll be getting any more sleep for the next month or so. Finally, I’d like to give a little shout-out to our car dealership, Roger Beasley Mazda. We had a slow leak in a tire and we’re concerned we needed new ones. We took it the dealership, told them we were prepared for whatever we needed (got a lot of driving coming up), and they took a look and said “It’s a minor leak…we’ll patch it up for ya. $28.” As my mother has said and will surely say again, “You can’t beat that with a stick!” Yeah, that’s where I get it from. Sorry. -RK

Rehabilitating Presidents’ bad deeds is an American tradition at least as old as I am. Apparently, we don’t like thinking that these harmless-looking old men did truly monstrous things while they were holding the highest office in the land. Maybe we look at them now and think they couldn’t possibly have overseen a domestic spying regime and unprecedented government secrecy (Obama), manufacturing false evidence to start a war and codifying torture (W), transferring wealth to the wealthy while creating draconian crime laws (Clinton), or, cripes, just about everything that Reagan did. Traditionally, we wait a little while before whitewashing their reputations and try to make them respectable to a broader audience. It’s sort of an unspoken thing, and I guess unspoken things don’t apply to one Donald J. Trump because dang, folks are already trying to make a softer, cuddlier Trump and he hasn’t even conceded defeat yet. “He’s not evil, he’s just a regular president with some quirks and a unique style of communication, and he’s definitely not a fascist.” Yeah, no. Dude is straight-up a fascist. I wanted to get this into writing because, if left to the fuzzy memories of days gone by, this attempt to revise the history of the Trump administration might go unchecked. Memory is not reliable, and history books have done a terrible job of detailing the flaws of past presidents and I can say that because I’m old enough to have voted from some of ‘em who have since had their halos polished. There are no angels in the Oval Office, but even with that caveat, Trump is an entirely unique species of evil. Helpfully, the Washington Post took it upon themselves to ask “Is Trump A Fascist?” back in 2016 and then to revise their findings in August of 2020. Unhelpfully, they graded him on a pretty subjective scale of one to four “Mussolinis.” Sigh. There’s still some good stuff in the article, but I’ll summarize it: In 2016, they said “eh, not really” and in 2020 it was more of a “well, there are still a couple of boxes his doesn’t tick but it hasn’t been for lack of trying, so he’s not a fascist, but he’s still the greatest threat to our democracy in a long, long time.” I don’t find the idea that “Well, he’s tried to do fascist things but people around him stopped him” to be especially exonerating. That’s especially true since those people tend to get fired for preventing him from sending active duty U.S. troops into U.S. cities to put down protests. In a somewhat-functional government, it takes time for fascism to take hold because you can’t replace everyone in the bureaucracy overnight with people who are loyal to Dear Leader. It takes time, so it’s not surprising that there are still some checks and balances against his fascist impulses. That’s not to say the process isn’t moving along at alarming speed. The President has been systematically removing people who aren’t, above all else, loyal to him personally. That’s not normal, and it’s not healthy. Ideally, you want people who put the country first. Failing that, you usually wind up with party apparats. Demanding loyalty to one’s person is, in fact, a sign of fascism and I’ve never seen anything remotely like it in my adult life. EDIT: I could do an entire post of the abuse of the Department of Justice and the office of the Attorney General. This tidbit is going to be relevant for the next few months, I reckon. Of course, that’s not as shocking as when he said that the Constitution grants him the authority to do whatever he wants. Again, this is not normal behavior from a president and not something you can just write off as “one of his quirks.” This is a claim to absolute power. This is a big deal. It’s also, sing along as I’m sure you know the words, fascism. It’s a good thing we have the courts, huh? Or, at least, we have the ones that haven’t been filled with Trump loyalists, right? It turns out that he doesn’t believe that he can be prosecuted, either. So, he’s answerable to no one and is filling all the positions that might challenge his authority with people loyal to him personally. Can we talk about the rallies? Those are weird, right? I don’t remember any other president holding rallies for themselves throughout their entire term. I must emphasize that these aren’t “America” rallies or even “Republican” rallies; they’re just Trump rallies. Those rallies turn into militias… fuck it, no, they’re not “militias,” they’re just gangs…flying the Trump flag and going into cities. They say they’re going to “keep the peace,” but they always seem to provoke violence rather than reduce it. The President encourages them and invariably takes the side of his supporters when there’s an incident, no matter who fires and who takes the bullet. Finally, the really weird thing about rushing to rehabilitate Trump is that he’s not gone yet and I won’t believe he’s gone until Biden in inaugurated. He’s filing lawsuits, sending out false information to his supporters, and basically doing everything he can to undermine confidence in the results of the election. Presumably, the game is to create enough chaos and manufacture enough uncertainty in the results that the Supreme Court will have a pretext to step in and hand him the job. So, yeah, the dude is a fascist. He’s not the most effective one ever, but he’s come a long way in four years and if he wrests another four somehow, it’s hard to see how it won’t be significantly worse. Don’t let anyone tell you “he was pretty much like other presidents.” It’s not true, and anyone hawking that line is trying to sell you something. -RK P.S. Kids in cages. I’ve heard people say “Well, if Trump is a fascist for putting kids in cages, then so was Obama!” A couple of notes on that one. First, while it’s an unquestionably monstrous thing to put kids in cages regardless of who is doing it, that’s not really a measure of “fascism.” Secondly, when the courts told Obama he had to stop doing it, he did, because he wasn’t a fascist. Fascists don’t believe the law applies to them. Trump just…

It occurred to me tonight that the most fun jobs I’ve ever had in my life were the ones I didn’t actually need. They were seconds jobs and/or side hustles that supplemented the income or at least gave me an outlet to do something I enjoyed when they didn’t (and yes, I understand that this makes for an extremely loose definition of “job,” but just go with it). Warning: I am going to be extremely vague as to the specific nature of the jobs for reasons. Nothing illegal, but there are some things I’m not inclined to share. I can only think of one that went bad, and that was largely due to it being a job with part time pay and full time hours, but even that would should have worked it. I was working in a dream industry for me, but the timing was wrong and it wound up being more stressful than it should have been. It took enough of a toll on me that my main gig was in put into jeopardy and there was no opportunity for growth in the second job, so I had to give it up. The others, though? They’ve been a blast. I worked in a record store when I had another job. I needed the money, but I could have just taken more work at my main job and gotten by. I love music, I love helping people find music, and the fact that I didn’t need this particular gig made it almost completely stress-free. It was just fun with a little money on the side. I worked on a book with my father back in a while back and it was brutal. This would have been during the “early home computer and internet” era. I was in charge of the graphics and layouts, and the publisher wouldn’t take emailed files at this time, so I had to print every page out on my little Panasonic KX-P4410 and then we’d drive to the airport to get to drop the pages off at FedEx right before midnight. This was four or five times a week and I had a full-time job. But, you know what? It was a blast. I’d do it again. I’m currently writing for one of the site in the Vox empire a couple of times a week. The pay is…heh…it’s Vox. That’s OK, though. I get to write and publish stuff and it’s fun and I get to be terribly silly with it because it’s not like they have a great deal of leverage. I absolutely love doing it, but if it disappeared tomorrow, it wouldn’t materially change my financial situation. The point of all of this is not “People should take second jobs.” Lots of folks have to take second jobs (I’ve been there) and that’s no fun. The point is a little hazier: A job you don’t need, one you can leave any time, can be a lot more fun than one you have to have. There’s now “Paycheck and Benefits of Damocles” hanging over your head. You’re on much more equal standing with your employer when you don’t have to be there. Imagine a universal basic income that allowed people to only work when and where they wanted to. Helluva nice dream, isn’t it? -RK

Hi. So, I’m going to make a habit of this and I gotta start somewhere. This is a snippet of a post, but it’s a true story and it seems like it is, or could wind up being, relevant. Back in the late 1990s, my father suggested that I check out his favorite web site. It was…not my personal favorite. It was about as far right-wing as you could go without being off the charts. He pitched it as a frank discussion of intellectual conservatism, as opposed to what was practiced by the Republican party. If you squinted, you could kind of see it from that angle, but really, it was just a bunch of folks who didn’t think the Republican party went nearly far enough if you know what I mean. Anyway, the 2000 election rolled around and it was one of the sites I kept tabs on to see what their take was. It was interesting. Believe it or not, there was a very real possibility that Al Gore would wind up winning the electoral college while George W. Bush took the popular vote. For a good part of the night, that seemed the most likely scenario. They. Went. Ballistic. Pages after pages of people claiming they would take up arms and take to the streets if “the will of the people” was overturned by a relic of the 18th century. They were serious. They weren’t “armed militias going to cities the President was mad at” serious, but they certainly weren’t having a laugh either. They fucking hated the Electoral College. Until, of course, they didn’t. As things turned out, Gore won the popular vote and Bush won the EC. All threats of violence were scrubbed from the site (interestingly, their willingness to scrub the site of things they didn’t like wound up being the basis for a precedent-setting lawsuit which they lost, but that’s another story). All the subsequent posts were about the “wisdom of the Founding Fathers” and how prescient their decision to create the Electoral College was. So, the lesson I learned from all this was: All that constitutional originalism stuff is hooey. They love whatever wins for their side. That’s the alpha and the omega of their political philosophy. All of the philosophical underpinnings are just retcons to back up anything that lets them win. Is the same true of the other side? Probably? It’s hard to say because, as a member of “the other side” my objectivity is not what it should be. Also, you have to remember that in 2000, there was nothing remotely close to a leftist online presence that could be compared to the “Fans of Rush Limbaugh” sites. The left couldn’t get anywhere near the enthusiasm required to build a proper echo chamber back then. Now, as of this minute and without having seen the result of counting and re-counting the ballots or the outcome of the barrage of lawsuits we’re going to see, it doesn’t look like the Electoral College is going to make a difference here. It appears as though Joe Biden will win both the popular vote and the EC, which simplifies matters a little. But, if you run into folks claiming that the Electoral College is some sort of God-given instrument of His Infinite Wisdom, I encourage you to remember this story and, if you’re of a mind to do so, call them out on their b.s. -R.K.

*deep breath* OK, so, there’s been a lot going on. Let’s do this. So, it turns out that working from home for an extended period of time in a tiny apartment is tough. Tough on me and tough on Nicole. The only reasonable work space for me is right in the middle of the living room which is a cramped space and it is certainly cramping for Nicole. Given that no one is likely to be working in an office any time soon (or, ffs, they shouldn’t be), we started looking at larger apartments that weren’t as centrally located. This place is a great jumping off point for taking advantage of the city, but there’s naught to take advantage of these days, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense for us right. But then, we had a brainstorm: “Would it make more sense to buy a house?” With the largely-remote nature of work extending into the foreseeable future, we had the opportunity to look outside of town. It turns out that this city is expensive to live in, but there are places within an hour of town that are more affordable and awfully nice. We battened down the hatches, paid some loans off, learned that paying off loans is dumb if you’re trying to work on your credit score, and got ourselves ready to meet with the bank to get a loan. We made an appointment and then… …I was furloughed the day before the meeting. That changed things a bit. At least we’d paid down some cards so we were able to get by, but it did put buying a house on hold and put us in an awkward position with regards to renewing our lease. Fortunately, I got an interview almost immediately. I wound up getting five interviews and a verbal offer, so things looked good, but somewhere between the verbal and the written, something changed and that fell through. This put us in an unfortunate position. The unemployment office here won’t answer their phone, so cash flow was becoming problematic. We were, however, fortunate. My old job decided that they were ready to bring me back so I restarted there this Monday. Phew. So, we got lucky. After a little recovery time, we should be OK and should be able to get moving again shortly. In other news, my boy is getting old. At some point in July, he seemed to be having trouble with his vision. This came to a head when I pulled out his favorite toy, the red laser. The sound of me picking up the laser always gets his attention, and this time was no different. But, when I turned the light on and started moving it around, he couldn’t see it at all. He just looked up at me and meowed, and I started crying because, damn, my cat couldn’t play with his favorite toy anymore. He’s not 100% blind, but it’s pretty close. We have to take care to not to move stuff around to much, but otherwise, he’s not terribly inconvenienced. He jumps up on the cat tree and on the bed like it’s no big thing. Sure, he runs into door sometimes, but otherwise, he’s doing OK. Anything else? Not a lot, I mean, when you’re unemployed, you kind of go to ground and try to conserve energy and resources. My secondary gig is still going, and that’s a lot of fun even if it isn’t terribly financially rewarding. The political landscape isn’t helping, nor is the ongoing pandemic and, I feel for everyone in California because it’s smoky here. Oh, and hurricanes and…jeez, this has been a bad year. Oh, and I’m pretty allergy prone, so with all the crud in the air, I’ve had post-nasal drip and a dryish-cough for some time now. Since my immune system is being kept locked down, the consensus was that I probably ought to get myself tested for COVID. So…I did. The negative result didn’t surprise me, but I did feel a little bit of relief. Anyway, that’s where I am now. I didn’t want to say anything until a couple of balls in the air landed. Fortunately, they landed relatively gracefully and without breakage. Thanks for all the concern and sorry for being vague last week, but, well, y’all know me. “Vague” is sort of my thing. -RK

Before I get started, I’ll acknowledge that I’ve been away for a bit. Things have been chaotic and that chaos hasn’t subsided yet, although it may soon. I apologize for being vague, but I’ll clarify when the dust settles. I have a lot to say, but that’s not what this post is about. This is going to be the niche-iest of the niche-y: My thoughts on a hardware device for learning how synthesizers work! I was 18 when I got my first “real” synthesizer, and by “real” I mean that it allowed me to build sounds from scratch as opposed to just selecting presets like “tuba” and “harpsichord.” Arnold and Morgan up in Dallas had a stack of Roland SH-101 synths that they were trying to clear out, so they’d been marked down to $199 new. I literally had no clue what to do with it. There were some helpful illustrations in the back of the manual showing how to make an “organ” sound or “synth lead” by manipulating the settings, But, I didn’t know what a “DCO” was or what the different wave shapes meant. I didn’t really understand what a filter was, or how it worked with resonance, and I absolutely couldn’t have explained an ADSR envelope. But, in a sense, I was very fortunate. The SH-101 was a very simple machine with limited options and things laid out in a fairly intuitive fashion. If I worked left-to-right with the sliders and knobs, I could get an idea of how the different settings changed the sound. That was the beginning of what has been a very long love affair with electronic music. So, recently, I’ve been wondering: What would be the best synthesizer to teach the basics of analog subtractive synthesis? We’re in a golden era of neat, affordable hardware, but none of it seems really aimed at learning the basics. There’s nothing I’d sell to schools as the machine for learning how this stuff works. Ideally, here’s what I would look for: * Analog-style workflow* 37 or more full-sized keys* 4 note polyphony?* All parameters controlled by a knob or a slider (no “menu diving”)* No features beyond what is needed to learn the basics* One speaker and optional battery power for portability?* The ability to save a small number of patches because starting from scratch every time gets old* An inviting, intuitive front panel* MIDI implementation* The lowest price possible Now, there’s an elephant in the room here. Why not just use softsynths on a laptop with a MIDI controller keyboard? That’d be a lot cheaper (at least, if you don’t count the price of the laptop). Honestly, that’s not a bad idea. I’d prefer not to go that route because I think there’s real value in touching the sliders and knobs and hearing how that changes the sounds. There’s more of a remove if you’re using the mouse to do it. Maybe that’s just me showing my age, but that’s my thinking. Does anything like this currently exist? Not that I’ve found, but there are quite a few that are close. The Korg Minilogue has small keys and way to many features. The Arturia Minibrute is monophonic, but it ticks a lot of the boxes. But…these are pro-level machines and, what makes them attractive to that set is that they can do a great deal more than I’m looking for here. The closest to this platonic idea is Roland’s old Juno 106. Just look at this beauty: It may not look like it, but that is a remarkably uncluttered panel and it’s really attractive, too. This was Roland’s entry-level polyphonic synth back in the day, a cheaper alternative to their coveted Jupiter line. The Junos absolutely sold like mad, in no small part because they were so simple. You could learn everything there was to learn about them fairly quickly, which made sound creation much faster and easier. So why isn’t this my model learning synth? Because they’re very, very expensive these days and no one has gotten around to cloning them yet (Uli, I’m looking at you!). A Juno in good condition would go for a couple thousand dollars now and, because they’re vintage, they take some care to maintain as well (although less than most of the other synths of that era). Speaking of Uli Behringer, his company seems the most likely to come up with something like this. They’ve made a name for themselves cloning vintage gear and selling it much cheaper than the original. Their versions of the Minimoog, Octave Cat, and Sequential Pro-One are all outstanding, but to me, the interesting one is the MS-1, their clone of the Roland SH-101. Behringer have added some features which excite me as a gear-loving nerd, but defeat what I’m going after here. We don’t need FM synthesis for our learning machine. We need, essentially, the workflow of the SH-101 (which was nearly identical to that of the Juno), stripping out the bells and whistles, adding a few keys, and one internal speaker, and I think you’re there. Hey, turns out you CAN do edits in MS-Paint. You probably shouldn’t, though… This is my first attempt at re-arranging the MS-1 as the MS-L (for learning!). I’ve moved a few things around so they make more sense to me. I’ve removed the sequencer, the FM, the pitch wheel, and left the Arturia-style waveform mixer because that’s really nice. My uneducated hope is that something like this could be made with digital oscillators and filters instead of analog because that should bring the price down and make it more stable in the long run. The goal here isn’t to produce an analog synth; it’s to produce a hardware device that teaches the basics of analog synthesis. Is there a demand for this sort of thing? Damned if I know! I know I would have loved a class that taught me this stuff and encouraged me to play with sound design. Maybe, though, it’s just too niche and not worth the investment. It may be that this sort of thing wouldn’t have the appeal of a class in production, sampling, looping, and using a digital audio workstation. It would be very much like me to come up with an idea that would have been genius 30 years ago. Anyway, that’s what’s…

I grew up in Plano, Texas. We moved there in 1970 when it was only about 5,000 people and Custer Road wasn’t yet paved. But, by the time I was driving age, it had grown into a suburb’s suburb. When you imagine a Texas suburb, you’re pretty much imagining Plano: Aggressively middle-class (with a few liars on either end of the scale), major streets laid out on a perfect grid around cul de sac riddled subdivisions, lots of green space, lots of shopping, and everything west of the freeway was extremely, uniformly, white (slight exaggeration, but…). Growing up there, I believed that all of this and all of my experiences were normal. So, when I started driving, my parents had the talk with me. No, not that talk. That’s gross. It was the talk about dealing with the police. My parents, either assuming that I would drive with the skill and care of an average teenager or else just knowing me really well, figured that it wouldn’t be long before I would be rolling down my winding and handing over my license and registration. I guess that hardly required a crystal ball. What they told me has remained with me to this day. “The police are there to help you.” “If you treat them with respect, they’ll treat you with respect.” “Don’t make their job any harder than it needs to be; their work is dangerous and they never know when someone could try to hurt them.” This was good and reasonable advice for me. It has served me well. I seldom got tickets when I was pulled over and never felt threatened. I saw friends mouth off, ask them if they had any “real” criminals to catch, and those friends always got tickets. I’ve been cuffed a couple of times, both of which were richly deserved, but otherwise, my interactions with the police have been reasonably neutral. So far, so good. What I did not understand at all was that what was true for me was not true for everyone. Of course, I assumed that it was true for all people, and that proved to be highly fucked-up. If you believe that the police will treat you well if you treat them well, and you see the police treating someone badly and you’re not especially well-versed in how the world works (i.e. ignorant AF), the assumption is that that someone did something to deserve their bad treatment. There are unspoken assumptions that go along with privilege if you’re not aware of it. Here’s an example: For years, I’ve told a story about one particular run-in with the law. I was driving home from Prestonwood Mall on the night of the first Dallas Mavericks’ playoff game. It was on the west coast, so if I hurried home, I could just about make it in time for tip-off. Hurry I did, going over 100 mph on Preston Road in an old VW Beetle. The light at Campbell Road turned yellow and there was no chance my little rear-engined, drum-braked car would be able to stop, so I just kept on going. There was a police car at the light ready to turn on to Preston, so I was good an truly busted. I had my car stopped and my license out before he even turned on his lights. The officer approached me and said “Boy, we don’t do that around here. How fast was you going?” I told him 105 mph. He shook his head, took my license, and went back to the car. He had to call it in because this was back in the dark ages before the internet. 20 minutes later, he came back and said “Boy, I’m gonna teach you a lesson…a lesson ‘bout honesty. Since you was honest with me about how fast your were going, I’m only going to write you up for 55 in a 45.” A few pleasantries and thank yous later, and I was off and home by the second quarter. I used to think that this was a story about the wisdom of treating the police with respect. It isn’t, though, is it? It’s a story about my privilege. Because I was (and remain) white and suburban and, yeah, respectful, I got out of what could have been a very bad situation and very possibly a night in jail. It wasn’t because I was good or smart; it was because of my privilege that I emerged unscathed. Anyway, I wish all of my blind spots had spot lights on them like that so I could re-examine them and try to course-correct. Spot lights are easy, though. Blind spots require digging around through things you already know and haven’t really questioned and you have to be prepared for the possibility that you weren’t quite the hero of your story you thought you were. -RK PS-I’ve been depressed. Really depressed. The sort that makes returning phone calls feel like they require a herculean effort and writing has been out of the question. I’m working on it (especially now that my side hustle is restarting), but bear with me.

If you’ve been anywhere near social media, mostly Facebook I presume, you’ll have seen this one: Day X of “20 Albums In 20 Days”. Covers only, no explanations. Albums that impacted your life in some way. Nominate someone else to do the same thing each day. That kind of list-making is absolute catnip to me. There’s one little problem: “no explanations.” If there’s anything I love more than music it is talking about why I like music. So, while I did the thing over on FB, I’m going to cheat now and provide the stories that go with my selections. Why? I don’t even know what day it is anymore, so cut me some slack on this one. 1. Oil and Gold – Shriekback “Nemesis” was absolutely all over the clubs back in the day, which is appropriate because it’s a great song. When I finally bought the records, though, I was shocked. It was maybe the sixth or seventh best song on the album. Literally everything on Oil and Gold is great. These albums were in no particular order, but this was as easy a pick as I’d get to make. 2. Viva Terlingua! – Jerry Jeff Walker I was raised on showtunes (mom) and 70s country music (dad). This was a particularly bloodless era in the history of C&W. The “Nashville sound” just didn’t work for me. This, however, is not Nashville. This was my introduction to “outlaw” country, which was much more my speed. It was my first exposure to country where the band seemed as important as the singer, and the Lost Gonzos were one hell of a band. Jerry Jeff was my first concert, too, at Billy Bob’s in Fort Worth. I won tickets to a New Year’s Eve all-you-can-drink show. Not a bad first show, huh? 3. Suffer – Bad Religion Matt, one of my co-workers at the record store, recommended this to me. Or, rather, he recommended Christian Death’s record and I mis-remembered it. Some accidents work out. This changed how I looked at punk with the intelligence, the quality of the vocals, and the energy of the performance. I was reliably told that real punk doesn’t have harmonies, but I can live with that. 4. Hearts of Oak – Ted Leo + Pharmacists Newly divorced and in a strange city, I was re-discovering discovering music in the early 2000s. Canadian music video channels and especially Spin magazine were two of my more reliable sources. I loved Ted Leo before I heard a single note of his music, so it was a tremendous relief when I finally got hold of this album and found that the music lived up to the hype. Leo was obviously influenced heavily by the stuff from the 80s that I wasn’t cool enough to like then. 5. Loveless – My Bloody Valentine Sigh. I was given the promo copy of Loveless (on cassette, no less!) at the record store. I listened to it once, decided it wasn’t really my thing, and gave it to Curtis. A decade or so later, I heard “Soon” in some random place and realized I’d made a huge mistake. 6. Fear of a Black Planet – Public Enemy Stefan, a guy I waited tables with, knew I was heavily into Nine Inch Nails and thought I’d dig this. So I went over to his house and he put on “Welcome to the Terrordome” and damned if he wasn’t right. This did for hip-hop was Suffer did for punk, at least for me. I had to re-evaluate everything I thought about the genre because Fear of a Black Planet is undeniable. And Bob, if you’re reading this, I still remember your take on the title track. 7. Flood – They Might Be Giants In 1990, there were two albums that were reliably in the record collection of every girl I knew: This one and Yaz’s Upstairs at Eric’s. I was already a TMBG fan, but the fact that they covered a song my mom used to sing to me (“Istanbul”) kind of freaked me out. At the show on this tour, instead of shirts, they sold fezzes, which has to be the most TMBG thing ever. 8. Pretty Hate Machine – Nine Inch Nails This album was my life for longer than I care to admit. Every track still works for me. In August of 1989, when “Down In It” hit the clubs, none of us had heard anything like it (well, Skinny Puppy fans had…*cough* ). I don’t think I wore anything but black for a couple of years. I got the CD at the most alternative store in Dallas (that would be the Hastings at Valley View and yes that’s a joke) in November and haven’t stopped playing it since. 9. LP – Ambulance, LTD. One of two bands on this list that were murdered by label issues. I found Ambulance by accident. I went to a SxSW showcase at the Red-Eyed Fly to see Stellastarr* (who were terrific) and got there in time to see an opening act that played absolutely perfect guitar pop, stuff Matthew Sweet might have come up with if hadn’t listened to so much Television. Anyway, the flyer for the show had the band order wrong I thought I was looking for The Unicorns, and it took me a couple weeks to find out who I’d really seen. This is a strong contender for best album of the millennium. 10. Young Team – Mogwai I choked on this selection. I love the album, and Mogwai Fear Satan is one of my favorite songs to play loudly (if not well) on guitar. But…if I were to pick a Mogwai record, it should probably be Rock Action, which was my first and I still use the intro from “2 Rights Make 1 Wrong” as my alarm song. 11. Electric Version – The New Pornographers Another Spin discovery. The reviews were glowing but didn’t really give me any sense what they sounded like. Eventually, this album was added to the jukebox at Casino el Camino and I got to give it a listen. It was love at first note. All of their albums are hook-stuffed, harmony-rich power pop perfection, but this one is my pick of that very fine litter. The first four songs would…

This one’s a little different. I’m stealing this from Craig Calcaterra, one of my favorite writers and a guy you really ought to consider following on Twitter. One of his friends came up with a series of questions regarding the pandemic and how it has affected you/me/all of us and they’re a good exercise for getting a sense of how you’re doing. So, I stole it. With permission, of course, but still.. When was the last day you went in to work? Physically? Wow…that’s a tougher question than I would have thought. 14 March, if I remember correctly. Somewhere around then. I’m pretty sure I just went in to pick up my laptop. “Weird” gets normalized quickly, doesn’t it? When did your state or city order everyone to stay at home? The city order came on 24 March. It’s a bit of a miracle that the state of Texas hasn’t overridden it. They’re prone to do that sort of thing. Has there been a particular change to your lifestyle that has been difficult to make or accept? Like many people who don’t normally work at home, the loss of compartmentalization of “work” vs. “off-work” has been a struggle. In addition, the fact that so much of the company has been furloughed has cut lines of communications and rendered establish process obsolete. We’re reinventing the wheel with everything we do and, despite my lack of organization in most everything, I’m a creature of process at work. Finally, my side gig is also shot. It’s a sportswriting job, and, as you may have noticed, we have a distinct lack of sports these days. I don’t watch a lot of sports, but losing that little thing to look forward to is weird. Having things to look forward to is like being able to see the next rung on the ladder. There’s nothing to put any demarcation between the days right now.  What do you miss the most? Normalcy? That’s too broad. I miss the sense that I know what the next day, the next month, and the next year will bring. Weekdays and weekends are just isolation days now. Gray, indistinct, and very, very uncertain.  What is the most unusual thing you have noticed since this crisis began? How social media has regressed by 15 years and I mean that in a good way. People are doing more and more of lists/quizzes/meme/tag-you’re-it posts on Facebook and Twitter than I’ve seen in ages. I did not expect this particular reaction. I’m not sure what it means, but it feels like it’s a good thing.  Do you know anyone who has COVID-19? I don’t yet, but it won’t be long. It’s circling near my direct social circles and I would wager that, within a week, someone I know will have it. Do you know anyone who had died from complications related to COVID-19? No.  How long do you think it will be before the stay-at-home order is lifted in your community? There’s really no way of knowing, is there? If I had to guess, it’ll be around the 1st of June, but it could be earlier (probably too early in that case). The complete lack of a national strategy makes me hesitant to even consider the end date.  Will you immediately return to your normal routine after the stay-at-home order is lifted? Or will you wait before returning to normal? If you’ll wait, how much longer will you do so? I think it will depend on when the order is lifted and the circumstances in which it is lifted. If we’ve decided to lift it to “save the stock market” when it’s clearly not safe to lift it? I don’t think I’ll be returning to normal. If we really are past it, and the medical professionals are giving us the thumbs up, I expect I’ll return to whatever the new normal looks like pretty quickly. I do expect the new normal to be somewhat different than the old.  What’s the first thing you want to do when the stay-at-home order is lifted? Take a weekend trip with my wife and/or visit my family. Not sure the order of the two, but those will be first. Have you been ordering food out from local restaurants (carry-out or delivery)? We have not. Nicole has been cooking every night. We might mix in a carry-out at some point, but the combination of uncertain income and risks are pushing us to dine at home as much as possible. How often have you been going to the grocery store? About once a week. We’ve found that Amazon delivery is utterly useless right now, and scheduling delivery from the grocery store is spotty. With restrictions on how much one can buy, a week is about the extent of how long we can go. Huge shout out to H-E-B. We’re very fortunate to have them. They had a plan for this sort of pandemic and started updating and implementing it in mid-January. So, going to the grocery is a little less traumatic for us than it might otherwise be.  Will you wear a mask when you go out? To the incredibly infrequent degree I do go out, the answer is “yes”. There’s no reason not to and if it normalizes it a little, then I reckon that’s a good thing. Again fortune was with us on this one. My wife has a decent stash of masks from crafting, so we’re in good shape there.  Do you think other people have been taking this crisis seriously? Too broad a question. I think more people are taking it seriously every day, but there are still those who are getting their news from bad sources who have been downplaying how serious this is. Unfortunately a lot of those people are older and more at risk of serious complications if they become infected. But, I think the trend is moving in the right direction; it’s just happening a month or two too late.  Do you think people have been over-reacting to this situation? No. The doctors are pretty unanimous in saying we’ve been under-reacting. Some of the reactions have been appropriate strong but misguided (toilet paper, I’d be looking at you if I could find you), but by and large? No, if anything it’s the opposite. How many people do you…