Antisocial Media

 A gorgeous day in Madison, and I did my best to enjoy it and try not worry too much about what July and August are going to feel like.  1. Let's ride bikes!  Lucas, age 9, taking out his new-to-us bike for a spin. His old one was small enough that his knees would hit his armpits when riding. The last of the ice on Lake Mendota. I took a jog over to Mom and Dad's to pick up my bike - it had unintentionally overwintered in their basement - and rode home via the UW Lakeshore Path. A little later in the afternoon Isaac wanted to go for a ride, and we paused at the Square for him to snack on the apple and go-gurt pouch that he'd brought in his pocket. This bright yellow crocus was one of several we saw coming home. 2. A chilling vision of things to come! I don't need reading glasses yet, but when I do I think I'll need a different frame design and color. 3. Uncle Muncle's Caramel Corn Puffs. Uncle Muncle's Caramel Corn Puffs.

Happy Weekend Everyone,  may it be at least average,  and hopefully much better.  

 Funny somehow that my Leap Day, rather than having some spaciousness and flex to it (as one might hope from a whole extra day grafted into the year), instead felt like five days crammed into one. I don't know how it was for anyone else, but I am moving sloooooowwwwwww this morning. I gave myself a little grace last night at 11 and decided that I didn't need to try to cram in an entry before midnight. But today is a new day so here are my Three Good Things to kick off the month of March: 1. The Mechanical Fair (Todd Terje Remix), by Ola Kvernberg https://youtu.be/hSE7GIVJz6g?si=cCadk1naLR1jowW4 I love this tune. It builds so well, and has such a playful propulsive energy. It grabbed me from the first time I heard it on Ezekiel Kweku's (aka Scholastics) live-DJing Twitch stream (Curricular) and I have never tired of it since. Some pieces of music are medicine for your soul, and this is certainly one of those for me. 2. Trains!  I thrill to the notion that one day in the next...

 1. At last I learn what the executives do in all those "hotelling" offices. 2. Lightning Camera. This app records a several seconds-long buffer that pauses when you press the shutter button, after which you can review the recorded frames to see which you want to use. I haven't gotten any dramatic branching lightning strikes with it, but I do love being able to capture that feeling that heat lightning always gives me. That said, I like heat lightning better in the summer than in February... 3. Elevator door selfies. Can't explain it, I just love the abstracted distorted mirroring of that brushed steel texture.

I'm frustrated and a little heartsick tonight, so I don't have many words for my three good things. Here's three photos taken by a camera I no longer have, of subjects that are no longer there. 1. This tree lost a big limb this fall, and must have been removed before the winter. The house looks diminished without it. 2. A young couple waits to order at Michaels Frozen Custard. It's a Chocolate Shoppe now, and I miss the idiosyncratic and overcrowded menu. Michael's was the first place I ever had a waffle cone, and I can still smell them. 3. I haven't seen this neighborhood cat around for several years. He was a stinky old character. For anyone curious, the camera was a Mamiya RB67.

It's been a long day so I'm keeping my words short tonight. 1. Blogging. A passionflower vine trying to cling to a lime leaf. I am really enjoying this daily exercise of writing and gratitude. And it feels good to be "creating content" solely on my own behalf and not to help Mark Zuckerberg get even more obscenely wealthy. I chose the right turn of phrase when I renamed this blog. Long live Antisocial Media! 2. Cooking food that my kids request. J Kenji Lopez-Alt's NYT recipe for wildly garlicky noodles My youngest has been asking for "the garlic noodles" for a few days, and I was so excited to finally have a window to make them that I may have sliiiiiiightly overdone it on the garlic. I mean, what's thirty cloves between friends? It's a delicious recipe, and while it's simple there's a lot of nuanced care demanded by the process. I'm able to make it reliably edible, but I'm quite a ways from mastering it.  Can't wait to bring...

1. Bikes! Two boys head down the sidewalk on the first bike ride of the year. Sure it's several months earlier for this than I'd prefer, but I cannot deny the joy it brings me to see these two able to take off on bikes for a small adventure. I'm brought to mind of my friend Elizabeth's favorite joke: Q: How many ADHD kids does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A: Let's go ride bikes!! 2. The mid-90s Honda Prelude. Red Honda Prelude,  caught at an awkward angle prays that traffic clears. I have always loved the design of this car. My friend Enrique drove a black one in high school, and its stylish lines and understated air of menace really complemented the rude boy persona he cultivated at the time. 3. The Isle of Elsi. A red plush stuffy of the dragon character Nogard poses in front of a shelf of books. My friend Alec (among many other projects) runs an awesome webcomic for kids titled, "The Isle of Elsi". You can guess from the name that it's heavy on ...

Today has been chores and music. Usually one of our family weekend days is about recovering from the past week and getting our shit together for the coming week, and the other ends up being an outing or activity. Not sure how adventurous we'll be tomorrow with the two new kitties to consider, but at any rate, three good things on this housework day: 1. Kids rediscovering the classics. Isaac has been listening to Strong Bad Sings recently (it's amazing how much of "the system is down" he has memorized), and it inspired Lucas to make this masterpiece: A drawing of Trogdor the Burninator,  by Lucas, age 9.  Burning huts, fields, and peasants are featured prominently. 2. Caturday. A young orange tabby cat, Leo, poses regally in a slanty sunbeam by the kitchen stove. 3. Pancakes. Me making pancakes for the kids has become a cornerstone of the weekend. I cut the dry ingredients liberally with almond flour, so each kid only gets one plate-sized pancake, and I get to tell mys...

 It doesn't get any better. (Taj Mahal's album, Oooh So Good 'N Blues) (Side One: Buck Dancer's Choice; Little Red Hen; Mama Don't You Know; Frankie and Albert. Side Two: Railroad Bill; Dust My Broom; Built for Comfort; Teacup's Jazzy Blues Tune)

Returning to Antisocial Media feels a little daunting so I'm going to borrow a format from Greg Pak's blog (https://gregpak.net/): post about three good things each day. Simple but load-bearing, and hopefully a good way to rebuild the habit of putting my words on my own site rather than Facebook or Bluesky. And I know from experience that I can let big schemes and dreams become barriers to actually doing the thing (whatever "the thing" might be), so starting small and flexible gives me a better shot at sustainability. So! Three Good Things: 1. Cats.  Sarah and I were cat-owners before kids, in that the cats were very much kid-precursors. Their names were Charlie and Lizzie, and we adopted them from a fancy dog-collar store on Piedmont Ave in Oakland, where the clerk ran an amateur rescue operation out of the display window. These two tiny little fluffy tennis-ball kittens adopted us, and we had them for five or six years. Charlie was a decent-sized gray doofus that pe...

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I feel drained after this week. So I'm lifting weights by myself in the exercise room of the ArbCo Common House, doing KenKen puzzles in between sets, and feeling really glad I shelled out $30 on a cheapo Bluetooth speaker. It's astonishing that something that fits inside my water glass is capable of being too loud. Aesop Rock, Haim, Mike Doughty, Paper Tiger, and Lorde: this next set's for you. To come: some recent pictures I've made that I like.

 This afternoon I am using my grandfather's camera to take black and white pictures of the snow drifts before they melt in the coming warmer weather. My hope is that they look like miniature Antarctic mountainscapes. If they wind up anything like these from my cell phone, I'll be happy.

The first orange blossom of the year helps take the edge off of a -22° wind chill.

A neighbor's farm artifact,  leaning up against a junction box

Around this time last year I stopped using Facebook. This was not a principled, or even conscious, decision: one morning I pulled my phone out, and as my finger hovered over the Facebook icon a deep and uneasy resistance came over me. After a few days the initial desire to log in faded and a kind of reverse inertia set in: not checking Facebook became as much a habit as checking it had been. It was a bad year, scandals-wise, for Facebook, but the haphazard nature of my nonparticipation kept me from feeling smug. Plus I'd really ramped up my Twitter use, and Lord knows that platform has its own issues. What's more, Twitter amplified a side of my personality in a way that Facebook didn't (or at least as much): mean-spirited, factional, shitposting. Anger is an important emotion, and expressing it is important; but there are times on Twitter where I just feel *hostile*. Unkind. Certainly unministerial. Meanwhile in the real world, I spent the last year diving much more deepl...

I was happy with some of the images I got on Kodak with this lens/camera combo; the ones of the Japanese Maple leaves were my favorites, and I loved how the two red peony photos came out. But. The finer grain and richer colors of the Velvia took me to another place. You have to remember that, when I was taking these pictures, I had no idea how they would turn out. Because the TL-Super meters through the lens (TL standing for, "through lens," natch) I was pretty confident that they would be metered okay, and I could see through the prism that at least something was going to be in focus, but beyond that it was really a wing and a prayer. You can judge for yourself how things developed: Spittle Bug Bleeding Hearts Foxgloves I Foxgloves II Columbines Interest Flower Interest Leaves Little Wildflowers No Idea Big Red Boys Anise? Apple Blossom and Ant Purple I am terrible at knowing flowers Nope. ...