I’m still alive. In body, at least.

I ran out of time to write a newsletter a week ago Friday because I was writing a piece about one big, awful autism story at the time and then Sia’s trailer for The Bob LaMaonta Story: The Musical came out and I got talked into writing a pitch for that, which left me with no time or energy to write anything else.

The good news is that the first piece, about the Toronto van attack trial and the defence team’s shameless and baseless exploitation of autism stereotypes was actually published in FLARE this week. You can read it here. The less good news is that the pitch that I was asked to write was subsequently ghosted. Which is fine, I suppose. I’ve been in this business for twenty years. I know what it’s like. But I would have done literally anything else with my time — like sleep, reread my favourite dirty fanfic, or even write a newsletter — if I’d known I was writing a glorified cold pitch and sending it into the void. Hell, I could have spent that time writing a pitch about Duran Duran and leopard-fucking and randomly sending it to outlets. At least that would have been a spiritually fulfilling exercise in futility.

Mentally hungover from the above, and feeling even more cynical about writing than usual, I took three times as long as usual to finish my steady gig work this week. And then I was so fucking tired that I spent the past couple of days in bed watching films on my phone and wrestling on my laptop.

Somewhere in the middle of that, I was profiled in Paste, though. So that was nice. I promise that my “office” isn’t quite as tragic as the writer makes it sound. In size, at least. I am a grown woman and published author who works in a cubbyhole surrounded by dolls in compromising poses and framed portraits of men in hot pants and fishnets. (The story mentions the lunchbox. It does not mention that one of the lunchbox’s stars has the other bent over it. Napoleon + Illya 4ever!!)

I’m still tired and cranky and weakly raging, so this isn’t a proper newsletter, either. But I felt I should do something before I gave up the habit entirely and never touched this thing again.

But I did watch Bette Gordon’s groundbreaking feminist art film Variety (1983) this week and want everyone to know that I was thoroughly enthralled with its grimy neon-soaked portrait of an increasingly horny woman who works at a porn theatre and develops an obsession with one of the pervs who frequents the place. Even if I couldn’t relate the material at all.

On a completely different note, I also watched Akito and Daisuke Sasaki’s Iron Man match from 2015 during this period. Here’s the latter describing the premise of Bang Bus backstage afterwards:

I’ll try harder next week. Maybe.