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Date: March 26th, 2020.

Time of Writing: 10:09 PM.

Weather: Fairly warm, according to my Dad. Partly sunny.

Mental and Physical Health State: The cough persists, with some running of the nose. It's hard to stay motivated, but I'm doing my best, I guess.

Day Overview: Lots of schoolwork and stuff today to get through. Absolute mountains of stuff. Right now it's a battle to determine what content is going to be the most relevant for the future. I attended an online version of the Communications info session I was supposed to go to, to be added to the major. Just in time for course selection for next year, which is good given that I want to really triple down on that in the fall, if I have the chance. I'm going to assume we'll be back for then, and sign up for Marching Band, but I'm not going to be 100% set on it for reasons you'll see in the next section. I played video games online with my friend Edward for a little while. Might log back on for more of that in a little while, but I'm staying up until midnight at least for some new music releases. On that topic, Nine Inch Nails released a couple new albums today, Ghosts V and Ghosts VI. I don't have much else to say about today, so I'll relay an anecdote without much of an ending that would be impossible in today's world.

Flashback to the spring of 2018. Nine Inch Nails have announced a tour in support of their recently announced album Bad Witch, and they've done this with a caveat; online presale will not be available. Instead, it was announced that there would be several designated physical presale events, usually in places tied to the concerts local to that area. One of these was at the Wang Theatre in Boston, where the concert was set to take place in the fall. These were the days when concerts were a thing that didn't just happen on live stream, and people actually went to stand or sit in a room with other people in order to listen to a musician play live, also in front of them. Well, I decided that I would go to this concert, since in those days I had a job and could afford tickets. My friend Theo also came, both to keep me company in line and also because he wanted to attend the concert as well. We got to the place in the earlyish morning and immediately found ourselves at the tail end of a line that wrapped around the corner of the block, through a parking lot, snaked through a public park, and then terminated in front of a loading zone for a medical center.

The line, at that point, seemed like it was moving fairly quickly. It was around ten in the morning, and it didn't take long for us to get through the park and almost inside the theatre. Once we arrived inside, however, we saw that the line before us had been very, very deceptively hidden. The theatre stretched the line up and around a flight of stairs, making a loop around the entirety of the second floor and back down through the box office area, where it looped back around on itself several times in a criss cross. There were two ticket stands running of the five built into the theatre. The wait was setting itself up to be absolutely catastrophic. Theo moved to leave, but I convinced him to stay.

After three hours in line, an announcement played over the speakers that the system, whatever that meant, was having difficulty processing purchases, and that the line was going to effectively be frozen for an indeterminate period of time. A collective sigh arose from the line. Things got grim. I downloaded the free preview for Twelve Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson, with the intent of making fun of it, but Theo didn't even want to hear it so I read it silently on my phone. It was awful. Eventually things got movinga gain, but not before around forty five minutes had passed. In the end, we spent about nine hours in line. Nine hours for Nine Inch Nails. Nine hours without food, rationing water. The concert was worth it, but that line is not something I'd want to do ever again. It did instill a good sense of patience in me for a while, though. Once you get through a nine hour line, nothing else really seems that bad.

On My Mind: Today I'd like to share two articles from The Atlantic (yes, boo, I know, but these are pretty good) about the ongoing pandemic. The first is by Ed Yong, and it outlines what it'll take to end the pandemic. It's called, fittingly enough, How the Pandemic Will End, and it's a somewhat long read but well worth it. The other article is by Joe Pinsker, and it details several different timelines for when the practice of social distancing will be over or scaled back. It also has a fitting title, and is called The Four Possible Timelines for Life Returning to Normal. It's going to be interesting looking at these, once this is over, if I'm able to look at anything when that happens, if that happens, and determining which predictions from the two turned out to be the most correct.

• Patchouli Blue by Bohren & der Club of Gore: This is jazz that absolutely languishes. It sits on a darkened stage without an audience in a building long foreclosed. The musicians, six feet apart, barely look at one another. Rain gets in through a hole in the ceiling. The music is somewhat repetitive and unvaried, but that can't be helped. The routine of the world in this pandemic is similarly repetitive and unvaried. The jazz is dark. Lights are on in every home. 7/10 could use some songs with faster tempos and more happening.
• Out of My Province by Nadia Reid: Unlike the repetitive nature of the Patchouli Blue album, which sought to totally submerge the listener in wispy smoke and nocturnal apnea, the sameyness on this record feels more accidental than anything, due to a lack of imagination rather than an encompassing vision. The songs are fine in isolation. Just fine. Average, even. As an album, it's also pretty average. This sure is music, I guess. 6/10.

• Terraria developed by Re-Logic Games: Just made it to Hell.

Works Produced: Not much today apart from a few responses to homework questions.

Other Thoughts: Thank you for reading my blog. If you're interested in the latest episode of The Quarantine Machine, you can find it at the bottom of yesterday's entry.