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Date: April 1st, 2020.

Time of Writing: 7:15 PM.

Weather: It was a little chilly when I went out to throw out the trash.

Mental and Physical Health State: Physically fine, mentally currently under duress due to the marathon of bad music currently streaming through my ears.

Day Overview: Stayed up really late again last night. This time Ari was the one to fall asleep mid conversation. When I woke up in the morning I found a note on my computer telling my brother and I what chores needed to be done. It took time to wake my brother up, but I did eventually. He helped out, which was appreciated. I managed to watch some documentaries for class before it was time to start the music festival, which has occupied most of the day. Good participation so far, given the time zone difference between most of the members. My mind is kind of falling apart, though. Haven't done much at all besides participate in that, hosting it. I'm glad people are able to enjoy it.

On My Mind: I decided not to do an April Fools thing with the website for a few reasons. For one, I couldn't really come up with a joke that felt appropriate. For another, I feel personally like most of the April Fool's jokes I've seen this year have felt forced. given the world pandemic going on right now. I have a few ideas for what I can do next year when this is hopefully over, and I'll be really excited for that, but there's nothing I can do about that now. I've already decided that I'm not going to trick y'all today. Instead, look at the background. Pretty nice, right? I'm inside, and out there is the world, like quarantine right now. The whole thing last month with the car was because, at the start of the month, I thought the whole Montreal trip would happen, and it did not. The car sort of represented a departure from normalcy instead.

• City of Gold directed by Colin Low and Wolf Koenig: Got me interested in something I absolutely didn't think I would be interested in beforehand, the gold rush years. The best documentaries can do that. Transporting you to another place and time, getting you totally engrossed in something you didn't know you ever wanted to know about. It's also incredibly succinct, which is greatly appreciated, though I wish I knew a lot more about some parts of life in Dawson City. 8/10 with that in mind.
• High School directed by Frederick Wiseman: This is also an 8/10, which might come as a bit of a shock given what I just said about the best documentaries forcing the viewer to consider something they previously didn't know or care about. I know about high school. I graduated from high school. This documentary is particularly strong in the other area I mentioned, transporting the audience to another place and time, the strength here being how it references the audience's own experience without any explicit input from the director or crew. There are no direct interviews. Just raw footage, edited together into something of a city symphony for the school. Made me pretty angry a few times. 8/10.
• Raditude by Weezer: Most really bad albums, I feel some level of physical disgust. This? I just felt pity towards Rivers Cuomo. I also felt scared, physically, of how he'd humiliate himself from song to song. It's really bad. Don't listen to anything from this. I'm serious. There are no redeemable tracks that aren't just copies of other Weezer songs, basically. 3/10.
• Smart Girls by Brian Wilson: No. Just... no. 1/10.

• I didn't start anything I didn't think I couldn't finish today.

Works Produced: Putting together the festival has been more work than you might think, but not really much at all.

Other Thoughts: Thank you for reading my blog? What do you think of the new background? Let me know in the Guestbook, if you feel like you might want to. As promised, here is this week's episode of The Quarantine Machine. One thing first, though; to make sure my listeners know how to set a crossfade in their Spotify player and properly enjoy each episode, here's a link to a guide about how to do that, right here. You can't set a crossfade in the in-browser version of spotify - you either need the desktop app or the mobile app for that. This includes instructions for both.