Despite my general left-brainedness, I’ve never been much of a math person. Flatland is a satire on society in the late 1800s narrated by a polygon. It’s a really short read, about 100 pages. As for the book, it’s 50% world building that doubles as social commentary and 50% just characters talking… and okay, almost nothing happens except for A. Square learns about spaceland. It’s charming, cerebral, and works for what it is, even though it’s not the best thing I’ve ever read. Man it’s awkward how much shorter this review is than my usual ones It’s one hundred pages so I kind of don’t have a lot to say sorry

A TED talk took me through a rabbithole on a blog that now just redirects to a scam website that hosts some gambling products or something, but back in 2012 (accessible through archive.org), was known as ifoundyourcamera.net. The website’s purpose was to act as a blog where someone would upload various photos to a blog that they’d found on peoples’ disposable cameras just left lying about, then hopefully people would be able to find their photos through the blog and receive their lost camera. However, a secondary function of the website is to feel this weird way- discomfort, maybe- to the photos viewable on the website. The website is full of photos that were never meant to be seen. Art like this has always fascinated me— it’s what I really appreciate about Bull of Heaven’s Elsa, Are You In There? as that’s just a someone’s voice on some telephone tape or something, and the sad lonely drone compliments the lost feeling of it all. As I walked through my neighborhood today, I listened to Unedited Voice Memos. It’s a similar thing to ifoundyourcamera, but with sound. Audio never meant to be heard. There are a few actual songs on this, the last one is really spectacular and very in the vein of Betelmire. But anyway, the sky is a light grey. The sidewalk’s gotten brown and everyone’s inside because the day is short of “perfect weather” to most folk. And by the time I’m hearing the very end I’m face to face with rain droplets. It’s the end of what may not be the best album ever, but alternatively is a singular work of art and something that shows how connected we are as people.

My mom got back from the Trump protests and so together we took a trip to the zoo. I’ve always heard Woob posited as the musical history of the kingdom animalia, so I figured there wouldn’t be a better time to listen to it, probably. The zoo was mostly empty spare a couple vape-hitting families with six year old kids holding up their Androids to take photos of the bald eagles with. I’d wanted to go to Newport’s Aquarium for a while now but since they ramped up their ticket prices to higher than an average concert’s, it seemed like a waste of cash especially for a place I’d already been to dozens of times in the past and you could pretty much look at all of it in thirty minutes or less. Not worth it for some cool swordfish, suffice to say. The animals that we did see were elephants, a sad dejected kangaroo sitting sadly by his outpost, and lots and lots of penguins. The zoo’s expansiveness and quality makes it arguably one of Cincinnati’s best attributes. We sadly did not see Lucy, the one eyed alligator who repeatedly rammed against the glass in fury at us last time we saw her, or the two demented monkeys who really liked throwing an ice cube tray around.

“I gotta cope with the fact that it dies down,” says Bill, predicting the rest of the album energy-wise. It’s a drizzly lethargic Saturday afternoon at its apex: 9:00 AM. At 9, the morning seems joyful, reminding one of childhood. If I were six or seven today would be a great day to stomp in puddles. The night before was furious, full of crashing storms, and rain was really claiming all in its path. The morning feels hopeful but sleepy. I was looking for my dog who escaped the garage earlier in the day. Putting on green slides I left the house in pursuit of the canine, then I put on Kill Bill’s Ramona; I find it impressive how Bill’s able to sound like a tough guy, but the entire album is really chilled out and low energy. I come to an intersection where breeze is heavy, so heavy you think at any point a car will crash into you; a car is about to make a right turn and I’m standing there. The car makes a complete stop, looks at me, does the “you go” hand gesture and then instantly continues driving before I can even get to the intersection. The jazzy beats compliment splashing in puddles and being unable to find this dog. I’ve found my way through everything in a block wide radius.

Following a manatee viewing for free in some public place, we visited the beach. I had Lucy on shuffle, listened to Make My Bed probably a dozen times because that one always came first when I hit shuffle on his music on my MP3 player, and now I’m starting to think it’s one of his best melody-wise, even if on a structural level I think Standing Room Only is his coolest, and just generally speaking Family Man is my favorite of all of his. Also I encountered his song “20 year old version” on one of his “perched owl” b-side compilations (don’t remember which one), and that one’s perfect. Anyway, I couldn’t find many good aquatic hypnagogic tapes to put on, of course I sadly forgot to ever download an mp3 of any Terlu albums or anything by Dolphin Tears, and after listening to a James Ferraro side project, I played Sam Mehran’s Zygotic Wonder, which was actually a really wonderful choice for the occasion. The album itself has that underwater quality of hypnagogic pop I love- the modern corny Jack Stauber theater pseudohypnagogic stuff just doesn’t cut it- it’s the stuff with that terrible, nautical, drowning of lobit recordings that really speak to me. On the beach, I rolled my khakis up to my knees. I splashed around in the water, wrote the quadratic formula in the sand with a stick, and searched for shells to partially pry open to see what animals I could find living inside. I was able to skip a couple shells, too, which was fun. Some girl was wearing a thong and mysteriously pulled out a vape from “thin air”, or more likely, the old prison wallet. The coolest thing I found was a pillbug sleeping in a bed of moss within two shells.