Ten years ago always comes sooner than you'd expect
My aim is to write newsletter subjects that sound like 2000s emo band song titles
I’m going on a road trip, which feels like a last-ditch effort to enjoy the summer before omicron arrives. My general vibe is to stay away from people, which isn’t always easy to do when you’re out and about.
In the meantime, here are some more fragments of summer.
Here, look at this pleasant photo
This is in Raglan, down by the wharf. It’s very easy to take nice photos here on a sunny day, even when the tide is out.
Raglantown is still full of visitors, making the most of this annoyingly hot summer. This means that I can’t normally park in my favourite parking space. In order of preference, my favourite alternatives are:
The diagonal parking next to the food bank
The slightly-too-close diagonal parking next to the church
The parking on the area that is like the grass verge/berm/nature strip but it’s covered in small cobblestones and there are no markings so it’s like, is this a diagonal space or parallel or somewhere in between?
It’s usually quite easy to get a parking space as soon as you’re out of view of the shops. I feel like people get anxious when they can’t see the shops and have to walk. But if this were Auckland or Wellington and you were still have to park that close, to the shops you’d be thrilled.
Life shrinks a little in Raglan.
The Sprite album
This is the best way to drink Sprite. Be in a restaurant or cafe (you can totally do this at home though), preferably sitting outdoors.
Order a can of Sprite. This is the most important part. It must be a can. It cannot be a bottle or from the post-mix machine. And it has to be a 330ml can, nothing smaller.
And with that, you need a glass full of ice. Open the Sprite and pour as much into the glass as will fit. Drink it with a straw, and because you are not a monster, use a paper straw.
That’s it, ok. It’s a little bit along the lines of “It just hits differently” but also it’s just Sprite in a glass with ice so make of that what you will.
Lost in the thrill of it all
I like weird chart business. Frank Ocean’s 2012 single “Lost” has been finding a new audience lately. It’s currently No.20 in the US Spotify daily 50 chart, and No.38 in New Zealand’s one.
Lost has already charted in New Zealand’s official top 40 singles chart. In 2013 it reached No.5. And — I say this with considerable pride — to date this is the highest chart position for a Frank Ocean single in any national singles chart.
But y tho? It is apparently down to a popular TikTok (of course, of course, of course). In it, the TikToker explains that the song is about the song narrator getting his girlfriend to help him traffick drugs. And apparently this is a huge shock for some listeners, who evidently thought it was just a dreamy R&B song about… literally getting lost in Tokyo? No, it’s not about the time when your Google Maps stopped working in Barcelona.
(The “Lost” video isn’t online, but psst don’t tell anyone.)
I keep wanting to use random Spanish words, pero I don’t I feel like my completely non-existent audience would not understand.