Yes, I am working on the 90s site again. The source materials are harder to find. It makes me mourn the drought that will face future cultural archaeologists when they tackle our current era. Well, I’ll just do what I did for the 30s and 40s and subsequent decades - sift through the vast quantity of magazine and newspaper ads!

Hey wait a minute

What will fill the gap? Nothing. There are only websites, which might exist in some broken form on the Wayback machine. The whole enterprise of capturing the culture in ideal form has been handed over to the People, with their hundreds of millions of photos and videos and reels, and nothing much will result. A billion videos of people sitting in their car complaining about something. In my feed today were two examples of an annoying trend: people reacting to some police encounter. One fifth of the screen is occupied by their face, which occasionally produces an expression of feigned shock or surprise or judgment. It adds absolutely nothing to the original, which itself adds very little to our stock of knowledge, and I gather you’re supposed to subscribe so you can watch this person make faces.

The still above is from an AT&T ad about Mr. Multitasker who types stuff and puts in CD-ROMs!!! Oh heck, here it is.

Modem man.

The dumb-guy / cool-wife trope has been with us for a long time. That said, it’s still . . . hopeful? Fun? Poking fun at the zeitgeist while celebrating it?

Update:

Yes, and as you know, that's the problem. The backup Keurig, which I kept from the old place but declined to give counter homors at Fred Base One because of its size, has decided it will no longer provide dependable service. When you close the lid, a light is supposed to glow and throb in anticipation: push me, and wonderful things will soon be yours. Now I push it and the unit turns off. I lift up the lid, put it dow; the light, which was on, turns off. Eventually it produces coffee, but when it acted dead this morning I stared at it in disbelief: why does everything have to be 32% harder? The Cuinsinart will not be here for a week, so I have to deal with this tetchy undependable thing. Next: the eggs turn out to be made of titanium, and will not crack on the edge of the bowl.

Eh, just have cereal.

WHAT

Yes. The cycle is complete. It went this way when I did Atkins in 2012, I think. After a long while, a year, I said "I do miss my Raisin Bran," and that was that. I'm in the 3rd year of my low-carb diet, but the end result is the same. The rules are dying. I bought my old favorite, peanut-butter granola. Mix it with yogurt and bananas, and it's a nice break from an egg with salsa and a little sausage the size of Pomeranian poop.

Most Rules are dead. Most of the things I put in place to provide structure and intention to the day have been abandoned, but not because they didn’t work or served no purpose. They did. But they were like the wooden boards used to hold concrete after it’s been poured into a mold. Eventually the shape is firm and the boards can be removed. Hence, I am reverting to the norm, more or less.

The previous diet was intended to stay Trim, and while I’m sure I’m still basically that, I do feel as if I’ve gained, and it is hard to care. What, exactly, am I staying sharp and trim for? A Cancun trip? That's never going to happen again, so why deny myself that buttered English muffin? Why deny the tiny cookie at day’s end? The pleasures in life are, at this point, infinitessimal, and there is small if fleeting joy in having that English muffin. (Half of one.) (With reduced sugar jam.)

Still hit the gym every day, if only to get out amongst people and judge their T-shirt slogans. Run on the treadmill and stare at the video screens, which seem permanently set to the All-Friends-All-the-Time channel. As far as I can tell they sit around and talk a lot and have occasional misadventures. Never watched an episode. And yet I know all their names. Their real ones, that is.

I have finished the day’s work and decided to look at some townhouses. Ghastly. Everything available, it seems, was built when Friends was on the air.They all remind me of the house where my dad spent his last years. There's Man Cave, and there's Man Maueoleum. Well, let's look at proper houses. There’s one across the street from the Giant Swede’s! Wouldn't that be madcap? Dropping in for a cup of sugar and all that. It has been on the market for 28 days, which surprises me. The price has dropped. It’s really nice. I’d like it. Birch would love the back yard - and I cannot imagine his delight at finding himself able to run in a space outdoors again. Bask in the sun and gnaw on a stick.

As things stand now we have a space about 3' X 3' at the perimeter of the property, where I perch on the edge of a concrete lamppost base and consult with a small cigar; I hope I am far enough away from the building and do not get a $250 fine. He has brought four sticks in the last week to this spot, all selections from the vast amount of broken trees in Sunderwood Park, and he can lie in the cool grass and chew. Sometimes he just stretches and looks at nothing, and you think what a lucky beast, to be inert and untroubled with naught a thought in your gourd, and then he sighs so deeply you wonder what he remembers, or what he regrets.

I can well imagine saying “oh to hell with it all” and buying the house, subletting the Fred (they don’t allow it, but they admitted that there are, shall we say, ways) and just leaving everything here and building a house anew with solid furniture instead of things I had to assemble.

But what of Red Wing? I know. It’s far away, though, and I don’t know what I’d do there. Simple: Get out there, join things, show up!

Sigh.

I’m not up for it yet. I have that end-of-days mood where it seems too late to start over. But I’d love to mow a lawn again. I am amused by the thought of planting a garden, but hey, could happen. I have a romantic dream of walking around without worrying whether my footfalls thud. I have a crazy pie-in-the-sky thought that one day I will come home with groceries and it won’t be seven floors up and down the long hall, but just in the back door. All those things are nice. And in all of those imaginings I call out “Honey I’m home” sarcastically because of course there’s no Honey and there never will be. It’s all done and dusted, and it’s just a matter of which isolation tank you want to occupy for the rest of your stay. Which stage you want for the one-man show. Held over, but limited engagement.

Best to deal with day-to-day things like troubleshooting a consistent apartment-wide color temperature for the lights.

That gives you the illusion of accomplishment, although it’s maddening. I have everything set up to do certain things at certain times and display a particular tiny and intensity. The Apple Home app talks to the Philips Hue app, but they talk past each other, like people who don’t listen and just wait for you to finish so they can say their part. I return to the apps and mess with the fiddly settings again and again, annoyed that they were so keen on giving me great power and granular control, but absolutely ignorant of how people use these things.

This system gives you 50 options!

Thank you but I want five

But it has customizable color profiles for the time of day and mood!

No one would be bothered if such options were not available. Is there a mode in the app where I can just choose between, say, ON, and OFF, and am not presented with the option to change the hue from “Savanna” to “Hawaii”? No? Okay thanks

Today's main accomplishments:

Rewrote Joe Ohio, fixed the art

Finished and filed Saturday National Review Online column

After not speaking to anyone all day, addressed the nation twice in two Hugh Hewitt segments

Set up Medicare Part Whatever autopay

Put up another picture; dropped one and broke the glass

Wrote two 2027 motel pages, one Clippings, one Product, three 90s ad pages

Continued editing and sorting 2025 photos down to the best examples

Mopped the floor

And now to write the Wednesday Substack. I won't have a cookie.

It's Tuesday, and that means ICE CREAM. That rule I will continue to observe.

It’s 1953.

		“Ired.” Another headline-only word. License plates, that was the problem. Tye retired in 1973. Other web search pull up ads where he asks for reelection and touts his fair-minded approach to law enforcement.

And that’s a good thing, although I’m sure it would be protested today for being hot and mean and unsightly.

Founded in 1942. Acquired by US Steel in 2016, and part of the plant was shut down. Don’t know how it’s doing today.

		Wonder if they found anything, and if Jess went to the house and slapped his hat on his leg and danced around with Granny:

This could be it.

		It would help to tell us the age of the participants. Perhaps we’re supposed to infer it. Also, good for the Kiwanians.

Sheriff reporting in for the locals:

		You have to admit, the man can spin a yarn.

Well I suppose they would now wouldn’t they

		Looks like they got that embalmed-beef thing beat, boys

That will do. Outtakes at the Substack today, for paying customers, with a special appearance by H. Fenton Mudd. See you around.