I really connect with this ode to Steely Dan:

My obsession with Steely Dan began when I was seventeen, and, even at the time, I thought it was deeply weird that my sister and I were so into an obscure band that was thoroughly identified with white middle-aged men. We were, after all, clueless teen-agers growing up in a suburb of Los Angeles populated mostly by quietly wealthy Taiwanese immigrants and their children...

The way that people get into Steely Dan is usually fuzzy, a gradual awakening rather than a bolt of pure feeling. I happened to hear "Do It Again" once, somehow, in the summer before my senior year of high school, and suddenly Katie and I couldn't stop listening to Steely Dan.....Our house--a low-slung, nineteen-fifties California ranch-style design--had an open floor plan, which meant that music played on any speaker system was audible to everyone in the house. Our parents were subjected to replay after replay of Steely Dan's first seven albums. "What are you listening to?" they'd ask on their way to the kitchen or the garage, bemused. Or they'd say, in Mandarin, "This sounds so bad!"

That part is relatable, although not identical obviously to my background. (And they're coming of age ~2010.) But this seems exactly right:

Part of Steely Dan's appeal was how they managed to perfectly capture what it felt like to live in the suburbs and never quite fully belong. Their songs are populated by atomized weirdos who often inhabit vaguely Western landscapes (the gunslinging desperados on the album "Pretzel Logic," the sleazy L.A. types of "Glamour Profession") and by disaffected suburbanites, like the housewives in "Deacon Blues." They weren't a band that you emoted to with other people--all you needed were the songs themselves, which were layered and complex enough that they didn't wear out after ten, twenty, fifty replays. The best way to listen to Steely Dan was alone, or with a fellow-connoisseur, in a quiet room where you both could sit and maybe bob your head to the music if you were really getting into it.

Steely Dan was also distinctly unshareable, a convoluted inside joke that only Katie and I seemed to get. Play any of their songs to a Steely Dan virgin--with the possible exceptions of "Do It Again," "Reelin' in the Years," "Peg," and other crowd favorites--and he or she will likely be turned off by the cryptic lyrics, the sheen of "easy listening," and whatever Donald Fagen does to make his voice sound like that. The boyfriends I've played Steely Dan for have been politely nonplussed or condescendingly tolerant. And then there are all those songs that are downright unpleasant, about child molesters or coke dealers or abusive partners. But even those songs, or the albums that I don't adore (such as "The Royal Scam"), spark in me a strange sense of ownership, the way that you might feel about a relative who embodies your family's most annoying foibles.

And then I don't identify with this part at all, but I think it's insightful still:

I don't think that I could have articulated this then, but my resentment was surely a response to my own perceived place in American culture, as much as any aesthetic disagreement. Steely Dan's songs were soulless, people argued, because they were created in a pressure chamber of perfectionism. And yet weren't Katie and I also declining to venture beyond the insular comfort of our L.A. home, toiling in isolation to land the "perfect" performance? I was already sensitive to the idea that kids like me, Asian American kids groomed for college, might have been technically flawless--we had the grades--but that we lacked personality, realness. We were rehearsed, "cold and dorky," even. But these stereotypes had so little to do with my actual life.

Liz Truss zipping out? or the surprisingly well-run roll out of the student debt relief website?

Why not both?

Confession: I've been trying to avoid posting on the midterms as a mini-challenge for myself, but I just deleted a long boring entry because it was just too terribly dull, and so here we are.

I am trying very intently to ignore the polls and actually live in anticipation of disappointment. Most of my activism is at the local level at this point. Still, I'm interested to hear what you all have to say about various races and Hershel Walker.

This is kind of amazing.

Alex stopped to help save a gunshot victim from bleeding out, he was then given Saint Paul Police Chiefs Award for Valor. He then gave this small speech.

(video from @/onsitepublicmedia ig) pic.twitter.com/1ZiyXxnA0f

— Griffin (@GriffinMalone6) October 15, 2022

That's in the Twin Cities. It was news to me that grassroots "safety groups" are a thing. Here's one in Chicago. Inspiring, and enraging, as you consider how fully our civil services are failing people that such things would be necessary.

I admire these kids' passion and drive for change, while also pushing back on the notion that throwing soup all over Van Gogh's Sunflowers is the most expedient route to combat climate change.

On the other hand, I haven't come up with anything better.

This is intended to be our system for checking in on imaginary friends, so that we know whether or not to be concerned if you go offline for a while. There is no way it could function as that sentence implies, but it's still nice to have a thread.

Episode Kobe forde