The library's open but nobody's home

August 12, 2021

A year or so ago I was talking to my friend L. about an experience we have in common—with each other and probably with a bunch of you—which is the periodic...

There are no bathrooms inside the magic circle

June 25, 2021

The first time we went to Sleep No More, my friend spent the whole first hour needing to pee. If you haven’t been to Sleep No More, the show that basically...

Dissertations for dogs

June 8, 2021

I was working on something a little more substantial but it’s not done yet, so here’s something from the deep archives. After we said goodbye to Huxley I was...

How to dance-fight a volcano monster

May 25, 2021

Last week was my second wedding anniversary, and while it has a few advantages over the first—we're comfortable getting a drink outside at a bar, for...

How appropriate, you fight like a cow

May 17, 2021

I’ve had a hard couple weeks, and in a bid to distract myself I tried playing two different video games. One was Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a...

End of an era

May 10, 2021

In the last week or so I have fired my agent, quit my job, and scheduled euthanasia for my dog. So if you’re wondering why there wasn’t a newsletter last...

A cow with a hole in it

April 27, 2021

I talked on the Longform Podcast last month about how personal writing is like a cow with a hole in it, so I thought I’d write that up for posterity. So:...

Women in wax

April 19, 2021

Someone from the Today in Tabs commentariat pointed out that I might want to send out a short excerpt of Women and Other Monsters as a newsletter, which was...

Lilacs out of the dead land

April 12, 2021

Hi folks. I'm trying out Buttondown as a Substack alternative—I like that it's no-frills and doesn't seem like it's trying to force me to make a whole...

Housekeeping

March 15, 2021

Hi folks! For reasons you’re either painfully, annoyingly aware of OR would be bored by, I’m looking into ways to move this newsletter off Substack. However,...

Standing in the garden, waiting for the void

March 8, 2021

I don’t want to hear about anyone’s pandemic anniversaries, and yet I feel compelled to tell you that the last thing I did, the last Real Thing, was exactly...

Every series of Taskmaster, ranked

March 1, 2021

Every single day in January and February there was a tweet going around like “is it just me or is everyone really hitting a wall right now?” Each one of...

Finally, I am a brain in a jar

February 22, 2021

Photo by Escaladix Sometime over the winter, I bought a sweater that I thought I could wear to an author event when my book comes out in March. The sweater...

Subscriber bonus content: Dead Channel out loud

$ · February 18, 2021

My friend has a concussion (snow fell on her head off the BQE!!! I asked, via voice memo, whether it was okay to tell you guys that and she said yes, please...

Welcome to the jerk pit

February 15, 2021

Took this at a different coffee shop but it’s closed too Once, many years ago, I lived in a coffee shop. I didn’t really live there—I lived in a house with...

Three thousand mile sunrise

February 8, 2021

I forgot to ask Monday if I could use this picture My friend Monday has been sending me videos of the sunrise from the top of Buena Vista Park. I didn’t ask...

The only haven you can trust

February 1, 2021

There is only one goth club in the world, but it has many doors. I've entered it through a basement in Manhattan, a former horse barn in Berlin, a gay bar in...

If I pay $40 for an apocalypse I better die

January 26, 2021

Hi folks, this is a brand new venture, please sign up and tell your friends! I used to get sincerely worked up when people talked about prepping for...

Welcome to Dead Channel

January 26, 2021

I keep talking about maybe starting a newsletter and in the meantime I keep generating all these bits of writing that aren’t quite essays but aren’t journal...