Colin Rafferty

Seventeen years married to the daughter, and it still takes me two drawers to find anything at my in-laws’ house.

This is my favorite version of the AI push — we don’t have any real ideas for how you should use it, but it’s not going anywhere, so you had better figure out a use for it and then start using it quick!

Uh, no. I don’t think I will.

This is some g-d nonsense. Sorry to hear it.

It is, in fact, good.

Heard a version of “My Favorite Things” while walking through the airport, and it’s wild that it’s both the best and worst jazz tune.

Saw a service dog at MoMA today and barely held back the urge to run up and ask who their favorite artist was: Jean Arf? Claude Bonet? Jean-Michel Barksquiat?

Live shot of my getting my Tzadik CDs from the basement after Zorn pulled them from Spotify.

Never have I understood the importance of wearing layers than in flying from Winnipeg to Atlanta in November.

(Jerry Lewis voice)

Ah, Halloween, the only night I can play Merzbow on my porch without the neighbors saying anything.

Listened to Glenn Gould play the Goldberg Variations for the 1,000th time today, and there’s still mystery and wonder and beauty and absolute magic in a seven-decade-old recording.

Today: Ligeti string quartets, Shalamov’s “Kolyma Stories,” afternoon walk with dogs, late night showing of the original “Suspiria” at my town’s movie palace.

(I’m also grading and doing laundry, but this is still a good day)

Join me for something I like to call “Pancake Thursday,” in which I make pancakes for breakfast and then sleep from 10 am to 2 pm.

a simple flowchart from "new project" to "ideas" to "final concept" to "product"

the previous flowchart with everything below "ideas" typed over dozens of times with words indicating a new idea has come to mind, making a large pile of text

plan//execution

I always feel like this weird outlier in these conversations because I started at his string quartets (Forbidden Fruit, Cat o’ Nine Tails) and then found my way to the
Naked City and Painkiller.

The best thing about Radiohead naming themselves for a Talking Heads song is that “Radio Head” is easily the closest Talking Heads ever got to a Jimmy Buffet song.

So many of these songs feels like 70s/80s McCartney—the bones are good, you just need to listen past the synths.

Springsteen’s error with Tunnel of Love was releasing an album that was really good after a string of Desert Island Discs.

YouTube video by epyon Jandek on Corwood

Hey, all of Jandek on Corwood is on Youtube if you want to watch a good documentary about one of the most enduring figures in eerie outsider art

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo8e...

This Didn’t Use to Be This Spicy: A Memoir of My Late 40s

Among my other reading, I try to read six long (750+ pages) books a year, pacing them over two month stretches, around 20 pages a day. There’s always an odd feeling when I approach the end of one of these books, half victory lap and half impending sense of loss.

They’ve installed those listening posts that hear gunshots in our neighborhood. Seems like a hard job, so I try to swing by and play Built to Spill’s “Perfect from Now On” for them occasionally.

age 15: Computers are amazing! I'm going to do amazing things with computers!

age 45: explaining to the fourth person this week why Chat GPT is not a replacement for google or the library or friends

This is finally going to kick off the long-awaited and deeply deserved Coctails revival.

Whoa whoa whoa—what’s this email? How does one get on the list? (Thanks!)

I know there are problems with streaming, but it’s still amazing, I say as someone whose mom videotaped and mailed him the entirety of season four of The Sopranos.

At the risk of going full Old Man Yells At Cloud, there’s an awful lot of people who seem to be utterly incapable of engaging with art or culture unless there’s something to buy and take a selfie with and it’s fucking weird

Black and white photo of six iconic women of punk/rock music as mentioned in post.

Iconic photo of pioneer punk women taken by Michael Putland 45 years ago. #music

From left to right, top to bottom:
- Debbie Harry (Blondie)
- Viv Albertine (The Slits)
- Siouxsie Soux (SATB)
- Chrissie Hynde (The Pretenders)
- Poly Styrene (X-Ray Spex)
- Pauline Black (The Selecter)

Reread Notes from Underground for the first time since I was in Mrs. Wareham’s sophomore English class 33 years ago, and do I ever respect the trust she put in us to engage with that book.

Been this summer for nine years now.