This entry:

It’s funny to call this a newsletter, huh. What’s the news? This sounds like the intro to a Seinfeld bit so I’m going to bail on it, but I’m also going to leave it here for now. Could be you don’t see it at all. I’m not typing this on a dang Corona. Remember that guy? The mustache tattoo on his forefinger guy? The serious writer who only types on a vintage typewriter and has a giant manuscript of his creative nonfiction opus in a thick manila envelope that gets more tattered the more he tries to push it on strangers? He makes his own mead?

It’s me. I’m that guy now. I collect records now. I’m obsessed with automatic watches. I get weird about goodyear welt boots made from American leathers. I know that BIFL is the acronym for buy it for life.

AI has turned me into a dork.

I’m starting to dream of living in a cabin and writing manifestos. I could even see rocking sunglasses and a hoodie because it’s cozy and also outside there’s sun that hurts these pale blue peepers. I will not be mailing bombs, that part I think we can all do without, but I could go for some couch time on one of those brown sofas with a flower print on them that all our grandma’s had while a fire crackles in a pot-bellied stove. Maybe I’ll chop some wood and get jacked like that Thoren guy.

Whatever I do, I need to stop talking about it or I’ll die. Over Thanksgiving at dinner and later when hanging out with my friends and later later when I met up with an old pal for lunch I could not stop myself from steering my conversation to language learning models and shrimp Jesus. I don’t like it but there’s a lot of stuff I don’t like. I don’t want to be like the pharmacist who gets mad every time he sees my Las Vegas Raiders debit card because he “can’t watch football anymore since the Kaepernick thing.”

I don’t want to have a Kaepernick thing. Do I feel like Frodo telling Gandalf I wish none of this had ever happened and then have to hear Gandalf say “yeah dude no duh nobody does.” Two people wanted there to be rings of power in the world and they were both bad guys and then everyone else has to deal with it. Does it concern me that now we can’t trust anything anyone says ever? Am I worried that there will be sometime in the near future where a worldwide tragedy happens online, live-posted by influencers from many different angles, and actual nations with militaries respond, and it’s all fake? Is that something I worry about? Yes. Do I like to drink clean water and breathe fresh air? I GUESS SO AND THAT’S WEIRD NOW.

That can all be true and also I have to remember what I try to tell myself constantly, and that is that I am not going to let these clowns take away my good time. I had a neighbor across the street with signs all over his yard about Biden, and I just cannot wrap my head around being that mad all the time that I’m on Amazon buying new signs about how mad I am. If in the 90s I read a book about how in the future everyone has a computer in their pocket and every time they look at the computer they get sad and then they get sad about how their pocket computer is getting weirder, I would be screaming at the characters to stop taking it out of their pocket.

When people get nostalgic about when they were kids and video games weren’t connected to the internet, and we didn’t have phones with 6-7 memes and robot girlfriends on them, or “hey remember how fun it was to buy a cd?” I can’t help myself from saying “you don’t have to have a robot girlfriend.” It’s not the law that you look at your pocket computer. CDs cost one dollar at yard sales. People with Corona typewriters with mustaches that started out ironic and then became part of their deal and now if they shaved them they’ll look weird will type a poem for you in front of your very eyes. Are the poems good? Maybe! Probably they’re fine! Most importantly they’re made by a human being.

My pottery teacher doesn’t know how to use email. He doesn’t need to, because for his main job he makes fake teeth and for his side gig he teaches pottery. I have to use email, and I don’t even really mind it. I like electronic mail. I thought it was fun when it first came out and we’d send each other e-cards in internet class. I’ve gotten a lot of good news that way. Cool job offers and cute little love notes. A shipping notification that my new automatic watch was on the way. Wedding announcements and cute frickin newborns and kittens.

Some potters I know still stick with a kick wheel. My pottery teacher embraced pottery wheels with a motor and then was like I’m good, fam. That’s cool. My whole life I welcomed technology with open arms, and only in the last 10 years or so did I start being judicious about what new stuff I was going to welcome into my life. I saw VR fail as the next world-changing technology, then these META glasses things, and I weirdly don’t care for smart watches. I saw RFK Jr. say that someday we’ll all be using wearables to track our vitals and I will just say to that strange man that the only way that future happens is if I have no more vitals to track. The last two concerts I’ve been to I saw someone holding ray-bans up in the air, I thought it was an inside joke based on a lyric I never understood but then realized those were that person’s camera. I don’t care for it. Nobody asked though.

It’s ok. I don’t have to like everything. I can hate it, even. There are lots of things I think are profoundly bad, have said my piece on, and have to move on about. If I can do something about it, I will. Fretting about it only makes me sad, though. And I can’t emphasize enough how little I want the bastardes to carborundorum. The only thing I can do is write every one of these words, make some mugs, write poems, do some yo-yo tricks, and point a camera at my unfiltered crooked-nosed face and tell you some jokes I made up with my own hands. Like my mugs, they may be a little off. A little clumsy. But in the offness you can see that a person crafted it just for you.

Because it’s post thanksgiving we got our tree and are hitting AFI’s Decemberunderground the Christmas records hard.

So far we’ve listened to:

Bad Religion, Christmas Songs

Johnny Mathis, The Songs of Christmas

The Carpenters, An Old Fashioned Christmas

Kenny & Dolly, Once Upon a Christmas

Trans-Siberian Orchestra, The Lost Christmas Eve (this one I got on clearance after last christmas and did not enjoy and do not plan on revisiting)

We also listened to secular albums such as

Sarah Vaughn, In Hi-Fi

Deltron 3030

We watched a charming BBC mystery show called Why Didn’t They Ask Evans based on an Agatha Christie book. The outfits were very good.

I’ve been reading T. Kingfisher’s Hemlock and Silver

This week’s videos:

Talking about botanical sexism. Not the viral myth about boy trees and girl trees but about how botany, once a science dominated by influential women, has become actively hostile.

You can watch it here.

If you enjoy unintentional social experiments, you can see how people reacted to a thread that I meant to be a clear send-up of a viral trend of overhearing men say awful things about their loved ones and trying to find the poor woman to warn them. Are they real? None of us will ever know. But there has been a weeklong search for Megan to set this right.

My version, to me, seems like a pretty obvious parody with a wholesome twist:

The responses have been people getting what I’m doing, people thinking it’s a true story and being emotionally buoyed, and people accusing me of jumping on the trend and making up a story to get clicks. And honestly, fair.

I often struggle when little jokes I post aren’t taken as jokes, and it’s frustrating until I realize that people who see them often don’t know me or anything about me. People who follow and have stayed following as I post on the world wide web have hopefully gotten used to the sometimes wild swings I make between dad joke, internet satire, and intensely serious posts about gender-based violence. That’s what it’s like to have lunch with me, too. It’s not for everybody.

Ghost of Yotei is still absolutely incredible. There’s a sadness I get from playing games like this and Red Dead Redemption 2, because they are beautiful, photo-realistic portrayals of pre-industrial places. Ranging around in these worlds filled with trees and plains and abundant wildlife before they were replaced by sprawl and extraction makes me worry that there will be a day when these worlds are so realistic we won’t grieve the actual lost landscapes, because the video game ones are satisfying. Also the combat is really fun.

I am taking any and all submissions. Poems, art, essays. The only request is that the fit into the general vibe of what I do online, these include: ecology, domestic violence and sexual assault advocacy, books, recipes

Also, if you make stuff that you sell online, I would love to feature your products in anticipation of stocking season.

Feedback, chats, questions? Email [email protected]