Archive • thank you notes • Buttondown

September 2, 2024

as deborah lay in bed waiting to have sex with me on saturday morning, i gripped a bag of ice in the freezer to chill my hands, then rushed in and embraced...

good natural light

August 20, 2024

i'm thankful that on friday t tested negative for covid and on saturday we celebrated by going out for tortas for lunch. i'm thankful that deborah wore a...

celebrating leo season

beautiful new newsletter from deborah celebrating leo season, her seat of power, “the glorious thick of summer, when it’s so hot that the evening cool air,...

the distance from the sentence to your eye

i mentioned it once already but two more episodes dropped yesterday and seriously do not sleep on the boyfriend (netflix), it has an all time great main...

sweet and soft and warm all the way through

that though the air conditioning for the train to seattle on friday afternoon was broken, they got us on a bus and it was fine (and had air conditioning and...

clairo is your brandi carlile

i'm thankful that tonight is the release of charm, the new album by clairo, whose previous album, sling, is deborah and i's shared favorite album as a...

it's like croutons as chips

it has been too hot to make art (a convenient excuse), but the worst of it has broken and the heat advisory has been lifted. another summer of keeping the...

head vampire of scorpios drake

there is so little to be grateful for in the wider world lately and i don't want to write and every day i'm more "behind" on the notes that support these...

see also the concept of original sin, which don't even get me started!

latest additions to list of Things Reasonable People Love That I Hate: crème brûlée, which i've been thinking about a lot because of using a blowtorch daily...

"havering" is synonymous with "yapping"

one of those workdays where it feels like you're stuck and accomplishing nothing followed by a day where you have a series of small triumphs that you...

all over each other in the stretch hummer

in terms of great single episodes of reality tv, i recommend the real world season 31 episode 10 (mtv, paramount+), which we watched last night and i am...

addicted to reality

all fours by miranda july which i am constitutionally a person who when a bunch of other people experience something supposedly great before me and hype it...

[fiona apple voice] drain the chickpeas

on friday, i finally took the thirty seconds necessary to hide all the hundreds of files on my desktop after months ago when deborah saw the buildup (which...

i made a video of kenneth koch reading his poem "the circus" set to clips of late 50s new york. (previously: on khloe kardashian and "the circus")

just him telling various zionists "fuck you"

deleting the threads app off my phone, which like i had given up on actually really using threads almost immediately post launch but i still kept the app...

champagne problems version of this take i know

feel like i haven't written in here in a million years and have a million things to write about which will take a million hours to complete to do any sort of...

spring asparagus

things i've been watching: the zone of interest (now streaming on max if you missed it, haunting and i appreciate jonathan glazer as a director who is still...

not something i'd experienced in carrot cake before

i'm thankful that it is light out earlier now, that instead of it immediately being time to get up the first moment i open my eyes, i open them and see that...

tavi gevinson doing i love dick on taylor swift

"fan fiction: a satire", which is tavi gevinson doing i love dick on taylor swift (my original elevator pitch reference point was marie calloway but tonally...

what's crackalackin

the show couples therapy which i had avoided because it seemed like it might be a downer and sometimes it is but mostly it's just very entertaining to...

another bespoke mental illness i have recently discovered

snuffle mats, if you don't have a dog, are an alternative to a dog's food bowl (usually a cloth mat with lots of frills and pockets for food to hide in) that...

she said to me condescendingly

at work we had a long guild discussion about the fraught relationship between engineering and design, which was enriching and also hilarious because usually...

deborah's march vlog, a highlight of my life

it's time for another monthly vlog from deborah, here is a short concrete description of every shot in the video. i watch rough cuts of this video all month...

i had a pretty good day on wednesday and because i want to record it as a kind of talisman to grasp on bad days and also i think it's interesting to read...

frank o'hara's walk poems

i'm thankful that though i had a really weird and unpleasant spike of nausea on friday afternoon that made it impossible for a while to think of anything but...

the dream of spoiler-free search

miso went to daycare yesterday because they were supposed to mulch the stump of the tree they unnecessarily cut down in our backyard (they didn't end up...

not afraid to be servicey

i'm really sorry to do this to you but i have been living with this inside me for so long and i wonder if in the tradition of email chain letters / curses in...

the work problems i was ambiently dreading having to figure out for the start of my monday i found, on holding my breath while opening slack and checking my...

little orange raindrops

the weather was all of a sudden very nice (65-70f/18.3-211c) all weekend, it really feels like spring is here. on saturday we had a little cookout (i'm...

a book i could not tear myself away from

molly by blake butler a book i could not tear myself away from in order to write these notes "on time" yesterday, my strongest possible recommendation if you...

making pasta the right way

my previous job is having their company retreat and because of watching on instagram i had a dream about it and as someone who has worked fully remotely for...

my plot memory fades very quickly

i'm thankful that i put miso's little dog bed beside my desk chair and that she sleeps there for large parts of the day (deborah and i say it is her office...

the official embarrassment of being represented abroad by short people

i'm thankful that e, who i have deep spiritual overlap with in so many respects, pointed out a new york fascination era that is absolutely central to my...

a charming way to process the anxiety of feeling late

i'm thankful we got an unexpected christmas package from my brother and his wife (which included among other things: an otamatone, chocolate truffles,...

compliment sandwich artist

friday after getting design approval 😎 and the QA engineer who had been working on my PR being laid off 🙃, i thought i was going to be finally done with it...

curtsying and lunging

i'm thankful for the internet archive, which performs a number of serious essential services but i am particularly thankful because last night we used it to...

my san junipero

February 28, 2024

i'm thankful that a designer who is known for being very picky about pixels (somewhat unfairly, i think) DMed me to ask if i wanted only part of his feedback...

freeze-dried sour skittles

February 25, 2024

hanging out at k and t's on friday night, smoking a bloint outside their house (and it not being dark yet because the days are getting longer), margaritas...

finishing the curse

February 22, 2024

finishing the curse after leaving the last two episodes unwatched for weeks because it was so deeply (intentionally) cringe that as the season went on, i...

miso says free palestine

February 20, 2024

e told me she's coming back to visit portland in the fall, the best local news of 2024 so far. on saturday we went to din tai fung for lunch with k, t, ec,...

à la American Pie

February 15, 2024

for valentine's day charcuterie board, deborah made focaccia for the first time (from this recipe, minus the garlic butter, which (somehow i am saying this...

haim's valentine

February 14, 2024

haim's "valentine", their best work which i will never get tired of watching my favorite valentine's day candy to get as a child which were the little pink...

February 14, 2024

this is embarrassing and normally i like to think of myself as a thoughtful person who carefully sources and checks my facts and who does the reading before...

two recipes deborah made for dinner

February 13, 2024

we were talking about the phrases used to describe sunshine while it's raining in different languages (i heard "the devil is beating his wife" so much...

my favorite recent book

February 11, 2024

my favorite recent book is love in a time of hate: art and passion in the shadow of war by florian illies, an anecdotal fragmentary gossipy cultural history...

teslas are the subaru of LA

February 10, 2024

i'm thankful we could afford to take a brief vacation to LA last weekend to get out of endless rainy portland winter, even though as it turned out it rained,...

bulldozing for content

February 9, 2024

here's an erasure i did of the New York Times article "What Israeli Soldiers’ Videos Reveal: Cheering Destruction and Mocking Gazans" (you can hear me...

January 30, 2024

years ago i recorded a musical setting of frank o'hara reading his poem "ode to joy" and last night i cut a video from "third avenue el", a short film that...

on fridays we don't have meetings

January 26, 2024

i'm thankful that last night we were watching a particularly beautiful episode of terrace house where yusuke, a sweet shy sad boy who is very good at playing...

it is possible, it really can happen

January 23, 2024

when i got to the doctor's office right when they opened at 8 this morning (i had to fast before bloodwork) they asked me for my phone number and i literally...