I made well emulsified cheese sauce pasta a few nights ago. Without a blender! I think I just needed more practice. A helping hand adding the cheese while I move the pasta around makes it easier too.

Having to get a blender out to make a sauce for pasta is not convenient!! At all!! You know what is? Using the same pan that you cooked the pasta in. This is another win for traditional techniques over nerdy gadgets.

“It’s so easy to laugh, it’s so easy to hate. It takes guts to be gentle and kind.”

- The Smiths

I visited Alaska last year. Alaska had a similar vibe to New Zealand, especially outside the bubble of Auckland. Houses had mold creeping up the sides, and seeing a house half broken down next to a fancy new house wasn’t uncommon.

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”

― Frank Herbert, Dune

Everything’s The Velvet Underground. The lineage of all rock, including shimmerly jangle pop like R.E.M. or The Clean, can be traced back to The Velvet Underground. I put together this playlist chronologically following the path of influence from The VU down to modern artists like Mac Demarco and new artists making interesting jangly rock out of Chicago like Good Flying Birds and Sharp Pins.

Alex Ross has an excellent article about the influence of artists from New Zealand on much bigger bands like R.E.M.