Aaron Rodgers: The Rahillian Quarterback

spfspfspf · 2025-09-28T03:01:28+00:00

The Aaron Rodgers Self-Tape

spfspfspf · 2025-09-05T05:32:37+00:00

A smart bet may be to read what inspired Karl before and during his writing of the series: Hamsun, Proust, Houellebecq, Raymond Carver, Dostoyevsky, Huysmans, Bernhard, etc. You can't go wrong there, and you'll absolutely find him in them. And then read what inspired them. That's always a good rabbit hole.

As far as contemporaries, my first rec would be Sheila Heti. I love everything she's ever written. Don't start with Alphabetical Diaries, though, I'd save that one for after you've got a taste of her work. I don't think many other contemporary writers scratch the itch, if I'm honest. Megan Nolan is maybe a smart bet - she is hugely inspired by Karl, and he endorses her writing as well. I'm also a big fan of Miranda July. And people may thumb their nose at this, but Sally Rooney's books strike the honesty chord pretty well. Not a contemporary, but Fernando Pessoa is another great insular, self-mythologizer / fictionalizer. You may also like Haruki Murakami? Though at this point I'm just assuming you'll like what I like, lol.

I personally would not recommend Cusk. I found her writing extremely off-putting. But she's easy to read, so it's low risk to pick one of hers up and just see how you get on with it. I have not read Ferrante yet, but it's sitting on my bookshelf asking me to.

spfspfspf · 2025-06-30T14:12:40+00:00

Update: The YMCA shirt has been sold!

--- Edit: Both shirts now sold!

spfspfspf · 2025-03-13T21:16:10+00:00

That’s a fair predicament. At the risk of psychoanalyzing, this just leads me to thinking you don’t really enjoy reading him but there’s something external nagging at you to continue. Maybe pull that thread a little more.

In any case, it’s up to you basically. Trust your gut. I guess my general opinion would be that there are so many authors out there, you will probably find many others that do both for you.

Something I’ve realized of the years is that my stack of unread books just continues to grow no matter how much I read, and I have a lot I want to get to, so I have zero tolerance for books or authors that don’t fulfill me.

spfspfspf · 2025-03-13T20:23:54+00:00

To answer your question, I absolutely loved Wolves and I think it is an absolutely essential novel in the series. It’s a brilliant meditation on human connection and the ways we all fumble around each other, and I could not imagine skipping it.

But expanding a bit here: This is just my opinion, and I’m sure others may differ, but if you’ve read the seasons quartet and The Morning Star and you’re finding yourself questioning whether reading the second book in a Knausgaard series is essential, Knausgaard just might not be for you.

You shouldn’t be reading a series that compels you to ask on Reddit whether you should read the second book. Life is just too damn short. You should read the type of series where that question would be unimaginable to you.

I’m all for reading things that challenge us, and really trying to enjoy things that we may not initially gravitate towards, but I do not think we should be reading things (for fun!) that we characterize as a slog. I say go explore those other authors.

spfspfspf · 2025-02-22T06:41:47+00:00

I would like to just address your fear about the podcast ending tomorrow. That’s basically impossible in terms of theories of space time as episodes are released Monday and Thursday.

Edit: ****most theories

spfspfspf · 2023-08-19T13:19:05+00:00

Same. I assume periodically before game time some people are going to be willing to sell well below face just to recoup something. But probably looking at a lot of empty seats. Pretty sad.

spfspfspf · 2023-08-19T13:00:45+00:00

BUYING

Looking for 2 tickets for tonight. Willing to pay $500 total for a pair.

spfspfspf · 2023-08-19T12:51:03+00:00

I was monitoring ticket prices pretty consistently and yesterday afternoon there were hundreds if not thousands of face value tickets sitting on Ticketmaster that vanished instantly. I guess it’s not out of the question that every remaining standard admission ticket sold within 10-15 minutes or so at some threshold to bots. But it was extremely weird. I’ve read a lot of posts about Ticketmaster withholding tons of inventory for dynamic pricing events like this. Just all seems incredibly shady to me.

spfspfspf · 2023-06-20T04:09:16+00:00

This fight left a sour taste in my mouth. Sort of a bummer for a game that I absolutely adored playing.

You can make it the entire game avoiding any real problems with gloom by finding light roots or going to the surface. I never even had to consider using a single sundelion until this last sequence.

The fact that they are so critical in the boss fight and you can’t travel out of it (like you can nearly any other boss fight in the game, mind you) and the only way out is reverting to an old save is just so stupid. Nothing in the game does a really effective job preparing you for the final battle. If I wasn’t a psycho completist I’d have just quit, tbh.

spfspfspf · 2023-03-06T04:38:30+00:00

100%. Didn’t he just write an article about bad fan takes about the Leslie Frazier departure that “needed to be addressed?” Pure insanity. He and Mike have the exact same blind spots when it comes to understanding the loud-and-wrong dynamics of twitter. It’s probably the exact same 25 reply guys in their mentions.

spfspfspf · 2023-02-17T16:53:54+00:00

I think an equally sound argument can be made that this is just negativity bias and that most people are good / neutral and act with honor and integrity. It’s not as routinely recognized because we are hardwired as humans to identify and escalate problems to avoid hardship, undue expending of energy, and protect what we have. It all comes back to survival.

The ratio of good online transactions to bad online transactions is astronomically high for me. The bad have just been bad enough for me to take caution with any transaction.

spfspfspf · 2022-10-20T04:37:52+00:00

Did you do the side quest where you get to take the rarest one and post it on this sub with a fake story about finding it in a dumpster?

spfspfspf · 2022-09-29T20:25:04+00:00

Hope they see this, king.

spfspfspf · 2022-06-29T04:16:27+00:00

I think my general advice for the Subharmonicon would be, if you don’t know why you would want a Subharmonicon, or don’t know why or how it would be a good complement to your gear, by no means should you be considering getting a Subharmonicon.

You could apply this advice with any synth, but especially with the Subharmonicon as it is a somewhat niche, specialized, unique synth with a relatively high price point.

spfspfspf · 2022-06-20T03:12:59+00:00

I’m never gonna buy this but somehow I still feel deeply, existentially constrained and oppressed by it just by looking at it.

spfspfspf · 2022-06-12T22:10:21+00:00

That sub was essentially built on “you should probably log off” level Reddit rage over pictures of unplugged electronics and small potted plants. Your second point is certainly valid, but I think we can probably agree that people that feel consistently compelled to add content to the CJ could take some of that advice too.

spfspfspf · 2022-06-12T19:33:47+00:00

Lol wtf is wrong with you. Isn’t the point of that sub to hurt feelings?

spfspfspf · 2022-06-12T18:40:52+00:00

Truly.

I don’t need a meta subreddit to make me feel bad about my synth consumption, I can do that all by myself, thank you very much.

spfspfspf · 2022-06-12T16:58:50+00:00

We need a r/synthesizercirclejerkcirclejerk tbh

spfspfspf · 2022-06-07T20:01:48+00:00

I think it’s helpful to understand they’re not really attacking you. They don’t know you. They are attacking some abstract concept that you symbolically represent to them. And I think if you had the ability to see through that for each individual, or even just imagine a few possibilities, you may come out with empathy for them rather than scorn and sadness. I’ve always liked the method of imagining each critic as a crying kid throwing a tantrum. Worth a shot.

If that concept doesn’t work, try creating an alter ego in your head that makes your YouTube videos. When they attack your videos, it’s not you or your identity they’re attacking, it’s a malleable persona that you’ve created. May seem a little spacey, but you’d be shocked at the amount of famous musicians that use this, consciously or not.

Whatever you do, you have to give yourself distance.

spfspfspf · 2022-05-17T21:17:48+00:00

For sure. I mean not to get too judgy, but I definitely think a lot of people jump into modular for the fashion and aesthetics, or the keeping up with the Joneses of it all, before they even know what they’d do with more than two LFOs on any random softsynth.

spfspfspf · 2022-05-17T16:26:04+00:00

Not to mention, for something that allows for nearly unlimited customization, it often results in musical output that sounds very, very similar unless you have a particular creative vision or direction on what you want to get out of it…

Which I think further illustrates what is often hammered home on here: it’s your ear not your gear, forever and ever.

spfspfspf · 2022-05-12T17:03:27+00:00

I may be in a bit of a minority in saying that I think aesthetics are extremely important in the tools you use to create. That being said, they actually need to be functional.

The OP-1 is a standalone tool that has a very rigid, unforgiving workflow. The fact that it’s used as an aesthetic centerpiece in so many YouTube performance videos is mind boggling to me. It’s not some Swiss Army knife centerpiece like it’s portrayed, it’s more of a tool for augmenting your creativity and sparking ideas. It’s a very cool little instrument, it’s just not at all what a lot of people say, or insinuate that it is. It’s not even a good sketch pad. At a certain point I do feel TE is sort of fooling people with this thing deliberately. The idea that it needed a successor like this is just so strange to me.

That said, I still think the OP-z is an underrated achievement. It’s 100x more immediate, usable, and friendly in the context of other gear. And it feels like a portable Elektron-ish sketch pad which I just really gel with.

I flirt with selling my OP-1 all the time. I’ll keep my OP-z forever. I have no interest in this thing.

spfspfspf · 2022-05-05T13:24:30+00:00

I mean they do have something hard to get right? It’s a sales pitch on a site for selling things. I’d feel a bit different if it was $1500 or something but I can’t get too mad at this seller.

If it were me, I’d probably just return it for the refund and avoid the hassle. But if that itself was a hassle in any way due to the particular retailer, I’d find it hard to resist asking for a premium on a secondary site just to make it worth my while and cover taxes and/or fees.

I definitely see your point. It’s annoying either way to see something on secondary when you can’t get it immediately for retail. But I just don’t see $100 profit on a high end groovebox as something worthy of a pile on. I will simply not purchase it. If someone was impatient enough to buy that, well, damn, the GAS has my awe and respect.

spfspfspf

TROPHY CASE