9.12.2025 - Weekly Digest
9.09.2025
In the game Skyrim I play to escape from reality there are these vile High Elf agents, the Thalmor, imperial bullies, basically, who go around arresting citizens for worshiping the wrong gods. Even these bastards don't wear masks, and they're legitimately kinda tough to fight as they actually know how to use magic and they're fairly organized. If you side with the Stormcloaks you're pretty much obligated to attack the bastards wherever you come across them which can be problematic, say, when they're just hanging around the throne room in a castle where you're trying to be friends with the Jarl. The issue with the worship thing, they reason, is that the god everyone likes was only a man who got elevated to godhood in popular mythology so he can't be a god so that's enough of that nonsense. What they probably don't know is that the man who became a god in the previous game was voiced by Patrick Stewart whose presence automatically confers at least some implied divinity. Oh and happy Star Trek Day (belated). 09.08.1965. What a hell of a thing it must have been to see that for the first time.
9.10.2025
Storms off Grand Traverse Bay and every structure is transformed into a clapboard hut. Folks are having heart attacks, capsizing their boats, rushing from their big cars like floating living rooms to the box store without coats, leaning into the wind, trying not to notice the drizzle getting thicker and turning into ice. We have to hole up here or the gangbangers we ripped off will find us. They're gonna find us anyway. We have to be ready How many can we fit under the floor? Is there room in the oven? What about ammunition, have you even thought about ammunition? It's fine this place used to be a dispensary. Not sure how that helps. Okay here they come just be cool and run out the back into a field and hope they're not trained shots. Here's that trail above the river, hidden in the summer by brush, if you keep your head down and walk with purpose and whistle like you're distracted you'll make it through. Not even clear who we're running from anymore and why didn't we stay and fight and put an end to it either way?
9.11.2025
My answer to the campfire question What's The Greatest Show You've Seen Live is always Slim Cessna's Auto Club. I don't know how many times I've seen them, at least five, and every show was the best one. Slim is a tall handsome front man in a workshirt that makes him look like the lead in a musical about auto mechanics. Or a background dancer in Grease I guess. His partner is Jay Munly, a guy with black teeth who in every way resembles a singing corpse. They perform brazen duets and execute jazz squares during solos. The two of them usually end up in the middle of the crowd on the floor in a cross formation. Everyone in the band plays furiously and if you told me they found their instruments at a flea market on their way to the gig I would ask no questions. Every song has a dynamic arc that makes you want to break things and start fires with your friends. Gospel country for atheists who live in cities.
So happy 9/11. Can't get this song out of my head now you can't either:
9.12.2025
Coit Tower. It's a long vertical walk up to the base. Prettier and easier if you go the secret way, the local tells me. Diego Rivera inspired murals about the history of SF. Ten bucks to go to the top? Sold. When were these commissioned. 1934. Test run for the WPA. First projects. Old hand operated Otis elevator. Talkative lady in a blue mask. Same song going up and coming down but different lyrics. A single note she sings herself, like a chime. Two guys one had perfect pitch the other had an app she says. Neither of them got it right. We think it's a concert A. Don't trip it's a long way down, she says. Up top panoramic view through windows. These are the bridges. The big orange one over there and that's Alcatraz. City in 1906 v 1915. We can rebuild they said and they did.
