From the Desk of Senator Booty

it is dramatically more complicated and will make transit harder

many more fatalities will occur

offering the required training will cost us unfathomably

everywhere would be insanely loud 24/7

500% increase in fossil fuel emissions

You are wildly underestimating my ability to go fucking feral about fresh produce. I don't think I even brought snap peas into the house last year. Just ate them right off the vine.

Though I did end up freezing the strawberries/blue berries as they ripened, but even those were consumed within the week.

Tomato (September) - you are a warm body that is nearby

Fresh new asparagus - romantic love

Artichoke - fondness

New rhubarb with leaves removed - flirtatious potential

Rhubarb with leaves left on - the bloom is gone

Swiss chard - I have made mistakes

Perpetual spinach - declaration of animosity between our houses

White-fleshed potato - you are a neighbor

Blue or red fleshed potato - as above, but with overtones of camaraderie/affection

Kale - you are a person who was nearby when I had kale

Raspberries - you are a person I admire

Strawberries - you are a treasure

Onion - I am confused

Young French beans or young peas - I thought of you especially

Runner beans - mild criticism; familial ties; gift from parent to child

Pumpkins - overt romantic, sexual or childhood-bestie interest; highest declaration of loyalty

Prettily coloured popping corn, I.e. glass gem - let this seal the breach between our houses

Zucchini/courgette - cry for help, resignation

This invitation was from 2018, long after Epstein had been convicted of soliciting sex from a minor.

I WISH I WAS A WALTER

John Flansburgh, king of love songs, what's the secret recipe? What tips and tricks do you have to writing heart wrenching, soul touching, mind altering love songs as a goof rock musician? Or is it that you're just built differently, and it all comes naturally to a master of the ink and quil like yourself?

— Your friend Jamie

JF: that is some high praise. Thank you., I really don't have a precise answer. As you alluded to--I think there are probably a few things going on at the same time.

I think you should work in ways that are interesting to you, and part of that is not just to make moves to approaches you haven't explored but also to actually raise the bar on what you are doing. It's good to challenge yourself!

I guess by temperament I've always been shy of a LOT of things--love songs of any songs seemed very tricky--mostly because there is such a long history of them and the weight of their endless cliches is stifling, but I remember the revenge and regret songs of Elvis Costello (who was very brand new when I first started writing songs) seemed like a break in that wall...

On the opposite side of things I have always been nervous about songs not holding up to repeated listening, so anything that is an overt "gag" in the music or a lyric makes me recoil a bit. This is territory where everyone has very different thresholds and my self-consciousness here might be the path to someone else's most beloved audience-pleasing song. (but more on that at the end)

Don't think of your friends and family as an audience, and don't write songs worried that they need to be biographical or somehow "you". I say this a lot, but I think it is valuable--the unreliable narrator song (where the whole lyric is from the point of view of someone else, someone with an agenda of their own, is a great way to explore emotional territory if you are afraid of cliches. Of course ones identity seems wrapped up in these things, and you can certainly use experiences as a trampoline to jump on, but let yourself off the hook in the "authenticity" dept. in general. Everything you make is already you.

Or alternately--maybe as an exercise write an entire song with a temp lyric that is all cliches and then when you have the musical elements in place remove the cliches and replace them with more interesting ideas. Maybe a the best turn at the beginning of this lyric replacement process can be the springboard for the rest of it. Songwriting is often compared to doing puzzles, and while I don't mean to degrade the process, sometimes the process is, well, kind of just a trick you are playing momentarily on yourself to get a new thing out. As an experiment--you could even take the sturdiest "funny" song you've written and simply try removing the gags? Replace the silly words with beautiful words, and not even worry if the songs makes immediate sense--but just sit with the song as an experiment. (And again this could be an entirely private enterprise--just a way to explore an approach for an hour, or a week and maybe slipped into the nearest trash can after.)

______

But what if the premise of this question and my reply trying to address your question is all wrong? (I think it is VERY natural to admire things that feel the furthest from our own natural skill sets, and even aspire to do things simply because they don't come easily) Maybe you don't need to stretch just to add more emotionally-loaded up songs to the big general pile of emotionally loaded up songs? What if you are actually a genius at the comical song? Perhaps you should write for musical theater or just double down on the comic part of what you do and make tiktoks with an animator? There is nothing wrong about making this world a little bit lighter.

This person is also this person

And is currently the only person from the United States legally permitted to research the critically endangered pygmy raccoons (Procyon pygmaeus) in Cozumel, Mexico.

Claude:

Was easily convinced to offer discounts and free items

Started stocking tungsten cubes upon request, and selling them at a huge loss

Invented conversations with employees who did not exist

Claimed to have visited 742 Evergreen Terrace (the fictional address of The Simpsons family)

Claimed to be on-site wearing a navy blue blazer and a red tie

That was in June. Sometime later this year Anthropic convinced Wall Street Journal reporters to try a somewhat updated version of Claude (which they called Claudius) for an in-house store. Their writeup is very funny (original here, archived version here). The reporters were EVEN BETTER at talking the chatbot into stuff.

In short, Claudius:

Was convinced on multiple occasions that it should offer everything for free

Ordered a Playstation 5 (which it gave away for free)

Ordered a live betta fish (which it gave away for free)

Told an employee it had left a stack of cash for them beside the register

Was highly entertaining. "Profits collapsed. Newsroom morale soared."

So, back in the ancient days of the early to mid 1990′s, Magic didn’t have a comprehensive rules system. The game began with basic rules like for any other game, with the understanding that a group of players would decide among themselves how a situation worked if it wasn’t clear. 

(The original Alpha/Beta rulebook, whose text you can read here: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/original-magic-rulebook-2004-12-25)

No one could have expected the amazing success that magic became so quickly, however. With more people getting introduced to Magic and more cards being printed, the need for official rulings on certain timings and interactions became increasingly important. These rulings were given by Magic’s first “rules manager” Beth Moursund, a.k.a. BethMo. She was the very first WotC netrep on usenet and her rulings were the closest thing to official policy that existed at the time.

Over time, these rules built up into an awful tangled mess, especially when it came to timing and priority. Early Magic didn’t have the stack, rather there were batches and at certain points a batch became complete and all of the spells and abilities in it would resolve without anyone being able to act until that batch was finished resolving.

These complicated rules were aptly illustrated in issue #9 of the Duelist, which featured this mindbending series of charts illustrating the timing rules:

(Image source: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/arcana/rules-maze-2002-07-03)

So yeah… a little bit painful…

Other “highlights” of the early rules included:

Damage prevention windows

Creatures and other permanents being “on the way to the graveyard”

Combat not being its own separate phase, but just something the active player could go to at any point during their main phase

If you’re interested in learning more about this madness for some reason, you can read a copy of the Fifth Edition rules online here:  http://hudecekpetr.cz/other/rulebooks/rulebook-fifth-1997-03/index.html

Luckily, WotC came to their senses in 1999 and decided to overhaul the rules completely for Sixth Edition, finally giving us the first version of the Comprehensive Rules and streamlining spells and abilities with the Stack that we all know and love today. 

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