ROTM

Marvin did meet with the animal communicator yesterday, via Zoom. He remained in a carrier under the bed the whole time, but this did not impede the flow of conversation. I have no idea what actually happened for him, but I found it weirdly relaxing to sit at my desk and listen to the animal communicator’s side of the discussion, and it was also oddly touching to hear what Marvin was (or wasn’t) saying.

After that, I went online to order a new iPhone. My current one is a 13 Mini, which I love a lot for its little size, but the screen is increasingly unresponsive. I set out to order a new phone a couple of months ago, but, nearing the final step, got an error saying that Apple could not find my phone number at Verizon. I called Apple and they said I would have to discuss the problem with Verizon. (Which is not what they should have said. I’ll tell you what they should have said.)

Since, like any rational human being, I would rather eat a razor blade than call Verizon, I waited until yesterday to see if the problem had magically resolved itself, but it hadn’t. I knew Apple would again say to call Verizon, so I didn’t bother calling them and just called Verizon, and had the usual enraging experience of being asked, “Would you like to talk about your shoes or would you like to talk about the Knicks?” If the answer doesn’t happen to be either of those, you soon hear, “Sorry you’re having problems. Goodbye,” and it ends the call, as opposed to saying, “I’ll connect you with someone who can help.”

It’s possible to hear the latter, but it takes a lot of hit and miss, and of course I am irate by the time I’m talking to a person. The people who are in that role at Verizon must encounter a spectacular amount of verbal abuse; I’m sorry to say I was pretty unpleasant with the person I spoke with yesterday. He said the problem is that I have a prepaid plan and that what I’d need to do is go to a Verizon store and get a contract, if I understood correctly. (Which is not what he should have said. I’ll tell you what he should have said.)

I actually did not know that I had a prepaid plan, and was waspishly adamant that I do not have a prepaid plan. Here’s what I have: a prepaid plan. (Which is likely the best thing to have at Verizon, costwise. With taxes and fees, my monthly bill is less than $42, with more data than I can possibly use.)

I then called Apple to say that Verizon had not solved the problem of my number not being findable at Verizon vis a vis the purchase of a new iPhone. The salesperson set out to place the order for me, and was stopped at the same place by the same error. While I was on hold, I discovered that the problem is having a prepaid plan, regardless of carrier, and that the workaround is to not choose a carrier and to indicate that you will do that later. So when I called Apple a couple of months ago, they should have just told me that, and ditto the fellow at Verizon yesterday, rather than saying I’d need to go get a contract. It is true that if I had a contract, Apple would presumably have been able to find my phone number at Verizon, but that’s the long, most expensive and wholly unnecessary way around.

The Apple salesperson placed the order yesterday evening. He asked if a delivery window of 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. today would be fine. I said I really didn’t need for it to arrive at that particular time, but that that would be fine.

I got an email saying the order was being processed; I saw that my landline was listed, so this morning, I called to update that with my cell phone number, since they had said they were going to email and text a PIN for the delivery. The automated assistant answered. I emphatically expressed my preference not to speak with an automated assistant, and a human being updated my phone number.

A bit later, I got an email saying that the delivery was unable to be completed and therefore my order had been canceled.

This was shortly after I was getting ready to do today’s medication testing for Marvin. I discovered that Wedgewood had sent me an orange-colored syringe, which made it completely impossible to tell how much medication was in the syringe! Also, if there is or isn’t an air bubble? Can’t tell. I called them and had a completely unhelpful conversation with a pharmacist. He said the reason the syringes are orange is that the medication is light sensitive. Quite understandable that the bottle itself would be orange, which it is, but the medication is only going to be in the syringe for 30 seconds. Not long enough for light to have any effect on it, as far as I can tell.

I was therefore already quite disgruntled when I called Apple to see why they’d canceled my order just after collecting the money for it. This time I said, “Go fuck yourself, automated assistant,” and was soon speaking with a salesperson, who, like many persons at Apple, has a Southern accent.

She explained that you should never agree to the first possible delivery window, because if the driver shows up late or doesn’t show up and it appears they can’t deliver during the specified window, Apple will indeed cancel your order. I totally didn’t care exactly when this item arrived, but I’m sure there are many people who care strongly enough to cancel their phone order and switch to Android for good measure, so I guess Apple is just beating them to it.

Somehow, the saleslady mentioned that her husband is on a fishing trip today but had called her three times. She said she asked him where his brother is. Her husband said his brother was taking a nap, so the saleslady joked to her husband, “So I guess you just want to bother me.” I said it sounded like he missed her and just wanted to hear her voice. I asked how long they’d been married, assuming it must be no longer than two weeks, but she said that their youngest is 29, or something like that.

Then she told me, in detail and at great length, the story of their courtship, which began before either of them was a teenager. I was in tears by the end of her story, and also worried that Apple was going to fire her once they heard the recording of this call, so I made a point of thanking her in detail for every element of customer service and making it clear that I was utterly delighted by this conversation, which I was. It made my day. (By the way, she said the secret of a relationship that lasts this long with the affection still alive and well is being willing to discuss difficulties. She said too many people want to run away when something goes wrong, but they will have the exact same problems in their next relationship. She said it’s not easy to do, but is what is necessary.)

As for the medication, fortunately, I had a clear syringe from Chewy and was able to offer Marvin a tiny amount of fish-flavored liquid gabapentin mixed with tuna juice, which he more or less ate most of, but not all, so that test failed, as have most of the previous tests, so I have arranged for a vet tech to come the morning we travel and the evening before, to give him two squirts of liquid medication on both occasions: gabapentin and trazodone.

It’s been a very big day in metal in these parts. I course have been listening to Decibel magazine’s top 40 albums of 2025, as published in their January, 2026, issue. There have been some hard slogs—I really hate Blackbraid—and some pleasant surprises: I thought I would hate Castle Rat, and I don’t know that I will ever listen to them again, but their album gave me goosebumps at moments.

Up until the final (top) three albums, the time-to-pleasure ratio was pretty far off. With honorable mention to NyreDolk (#38!—practically at the bottom) and Species (#21), the only band I fell completely in love with was Morbikon (#33, also pretty close to the bottom), who fortunately have just two albums, so I didn’t have a huge amount to work through. I have listened to their two albums many, many times, with great pleasure.

I think I was not posting regularly last fall, so did I mention that I was Decibel’s READER OF THE MONTH, in October, 2025? I was! By far the deepest honor of my life. I know I have mentioned great honors a few times very recently, but really, being Decibel’s ROTM was truly the most exciting and satisfying thing that ever happened to me.

Number three on Decibel’s top 40 list was the latest from Paradise Lost, one of my favorite bands. I assumed I would love the new album, but it’s actually going to take some getting used to. I am not far enough into my Paradise Lost-athon. An “-athon,” in my lexicon, is when you listen to every studio album of a given band in chronological order. However, one thing has a way of spiraling off in another direction, so I am in the middle of -athons for Paradise Lost, King’s X, Carcass, and Cathedral, and actually have not even quite finished my Darkthrone-athon.

With Paradise Lost, I began with Shades of God, which I loved immediately. I went back to their first album after a while, and to this day, have not gotten past Draconian Times. It’s a ways from that to the latest—more than 30 years and a bunch of albums. As with many metal bands, the guitar solos can sound so far out of the pocket—completely outside the entire outfit, possibly—that you wonder if the guy is soloing over a different song than everyone else in the band is playing.

For a prime example—and I am not dissing this song; I completely love this song, including for its guitar solo—try “Caesar’s Palace” by Morbid Angel.

When it comes to Paradise Lost, it happens routinely and is actually kind of heartwarming. You can clearly see the thought bubble over that one guy’s head: “I don’t care if the rest of these blokes are in the key of C. I’m in the key of F sharp, right on.”

Yesterday, on to the album that was the runner up: The Spin, by Messa, an Italian band. Their name means “mass,” in the sense of the religious ritual. I don’t know how often I’ll listen to the whole album, but at moments, it completely stunned me.

And so today, the big winner! The band: Deadguy. The album: Near-Death Travel Services. Per the review, their genre is a mix of metal and hardcore. In 31 years, they have produced precisely two albums; the -athon is 50 percent complete already! For such obnoxious music—perfectly consonant with my mood today—it’s surprisingly catchy. Kinda perfect. They deserved to win.

The review says this is the finest comeback album since Carcass’s Surgical Steel, which once upon a time was also Decibel’s record of the year. I happen to already love Carcass (who have produced only eight albums, depending on how you count) and am well into that -athon, but had not gotten to Surgical Steel, so I leaped ahead to that today, and also set out to find the answer to a question that had been perplexing me for some months.

Now, when it comes to guitar solos, Carcass’s do not fall into that previously described category. They are delectably, deliciously, perfectly, heartbreakingly in the pocket. Now hear this: “Buried Dreams.” It has never in my entire life been the case that a guitar solo was the first thing I liked about a band, but the guitar solos were the first thing I liked about Carcass, in “Buried Dreams.” I heard it / them, and I vaguely thought, “That’s rather pretty. I’d like to hear that again.” I have heard the song many times since then, and still practically black out when I hear that solo—or solos.

Carcass has at times, but not always, had two lead guitarists at the same time; the vocalist plays the bass. There’s a drummer. So the question that had perplexed me was who was playing that solo; it did sound like two people taking turns, but was it? There is one guitarist that has been in Carcass every year it’s been active: Bill Steer. Look him up. He is darling. But in that song, while Bill Steer plays the first part of the guitar solo, which is wonderful, I established today, by watching a live version of the song, that it is Michael Arnott who plays the second part, which is the part that nearly makes me fall on the floor every single time I hear it.

As for Surgical Steel, it is thoroughly excellent. Like the Deadguy album, very heavy and also very catchy.

I walked over to the vet’s office to pick up some clear oral syringes for the vet tech to use—is this plan really going to work? It was a gorgeous day, the kind of day on which I keep thinking, “I can’t believe I’m going to leave this best place on earth.”

Leaving my job has landed like a psychic ton of bricks, despite it being my choice and despite my having been thinking about it for some time. It is shocking to have something so big and important suddenly gone. It feels like a lesson about the impermanence of other large things, such as my good health and life itself, and even the somewhat lesser but still pretty big thing of my rent-controlled Mission District apartment. The message seems to be: Don’t hold on. You cannot. Let go. Let go. Let go.

But I’m not sure how “Let go” applies to my apartment. Does it mean to let go of the apartment itself, or to not to cling to the money it would take to pay my rent for however long? Perhaps for a year; I imagine I would know by then if I had made a giant mistake.