Welcome to the inaugural edition of the nothing here newsletter. I have long been a fan of the newsletter as a form and wanted to throw my hat into the ring. But, writing an entire newsletter alone seemed like too much work and too much stress. Do I have enough interesting opinions? Even if I did, would anyone care?
So, I decided to rope in some friends/colleagues/lovers to help build something that is (AFAIK) new in the newsletter space - the usual collection of links and recommendations, but from a group of people, with a conversational back and forth whenever we have differing viewpoints to offer.
Now that that’s out of the way, let me introduce...
The Team
Corey J. White (CJW) - author of the The VoidWitch Saga. Newsletter facilitator. Naarm/Melbourne. Tweets @cjwhite.
Marlee Jane Ward (MJW) - Author of ‘Welcome To Orphancorp’ and ‘Psynode’. Host of Catastropod. ADHD, spec fic, feminism, cats. On Wurundjeri land in Melbourne, Australia. @marleejaneward
Austin Armatys (AA) - Writer/Teacher/Wretched Creature // Oh Nothing Press // MechaDeath physical edition available now // @0hnothing
John English (JE) - Photographer - Solvent Image. Writer of upcoming comic CEL. Based in Brisbane, Australia @Herts_Solvent
m1k3y (MKY) - Wallfacer / Apocalyptic Futurist / #salvagepunk / @m1k3y
Articles
CJW: A Company Built on a Bluff - Reeves Wiedeman at New York Magazine
I was exactly the type to be drawn to Vice in my late teens/early twenties: privileged white guy with a delusions of counterculture. This article outlines a sort of brand/financial history of Vice, and touches on the sexual assault allegations that came out against the company recently. Needless to say, the youth-oriented “counter-cultural” brand (that's partially owned by Disney, and fucking venture capital firms) is another old white male dinosaur overdue for extinction.
AA: Goddammit, is the first thing I'm going to write for this newsletter a defence of VICE? Corey! You bastard!
CJW: Feel free, but reading that article made me not only hate them now, but retroactively.
AA: I have a copy of Gavin McInnes’ memoir “How To Piss In Public” sitting around in a box somewhere. I bought it because I once thought he was cool and interesting, and I was convinced that his conservative persona was all just an elaborate ruse. Fuck me, how wrong I was. I suppose I should have sold that dumb book years ago, or given it away, or maybe just tossed it in the bin, but instead I keep it around as a reminder of what a fucking rube I can be.
Vice – as an entity, when separated from its founders and their sexist, alterni-bro culture (and I give myself full permission to do this, please don't @ me) - has done some good stuff over the years; it has published the work of many writers and artists I admire (Blake Butler, Megan Boyle, Nick Gazin, Johnny Ryan, Cat Marnell etc.) and produced a bunch of A/V content I have also enjoyed (David Choe's “Thumbs Up”, some interesting current affairs reporting, Thrasher's King of the Road series and honestly a whole bunch more). Reading the article Corey has linked above (which surely can't really claim to be any sort of objective journalism, but is definitely a bravura piece of emotive cultural critique) didn't make me retroactively hate the brand. (In general I hope not to feel anything approaching genuine emotion for a fucking brand). I think it’s funny that powerful media industry dudes believed Shane Smith's bullshit for so long, and bought into it so thoroughly (and expensively). I hope Smith's hollow hype causes Murdoch and all of those other greedheads to lose a bunch of money, the suckers. Vice, in its earliest form at least, was always about exploitation and manipulation, but back then it seemed to be mostly “punching up” - a guide to hacking the world, played in a style that was refreshingly free of politeness and pretence. Maybe it's time for Vice to go away, but I hope something will take its place that's as fun, irreverent and willing to take risks as they once were, but this time with an ideology and approach that’s more suited to the 21st century...
I haven’t seen anything like that just yet, so maybe we'll just have to build it ourselves?
JE: I've got something here that may be even more damaging to Vice’s credibility than its corporate takeover or imperialist/misogynistic co-founder. This “game-show” is funded by the insurance firm AHM and is without a doubt one of the lamest, cringiest things I've ever seen. See how far you make it before you throw up in your mouth.
I must add that their music branch Noisey is consistently excellent - their series on Atlanta is definitive (you gotta love Thomas Morton) and any of Action Bronson’s cooking shows on their network are a fine example of the genre.
MJW: The ‘too cool’ Vice vibe has always put me off. I think they’re doing some great stuff due to having some excellent writers, but I’m not cool, and thus, not their target audience. I’m neither surprised nor dismayed by this article, I expected it.
AA: Strangely, describing yourself as “not cool” is the ultimate cool power move! MJW: 1 VICE: 0
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AA: Cross Border Operations - Angela Mitropoulos and Matthew Kiem at The New Inquiry
There is a global entourage which celebrates Australia’s overt cruelty as an exemplar worthy of emulation, racist pride and enjoyment.
William Gibson recently posted this on Twitter about America’s recent fucking misery, but you don’t need to perform great feats of mental gymnastics to apply it to our long tradition of state-sanctioned inhumanity in Australia.
General strike, anyone? It’s happened before. Let’s get it on.
CJW: Sadly, my call for a general strike did not spread like wildfire. But yes, that Cross Border Operations article is an important read for any Americans still outraged by children in cages. Realise that the Australian government has gotten away with normalising this sort of disgusting inhumane policy - and not only that, but they’re serving as an example for nationalistic/white supremacist types in other parts of the world.
Somewhat related to the above, here's another article that looks at how the world might change without Team America World Police taking a prominent position on the global stage.
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MJW: SW's fight to retain control of their business against advertising sites, the FBI, and even their own customers. Longreads does a deep dive into how the internet has helped and hindered sex workers in Sex Workers vs The Internet, by Rick Paulas.
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JE: I Got Too High & Started Empathising Too Much With The Host Of ‘Chasing Monsters’ - Ben McLeay at Pedestrian.tv
With a level of clarity I could only possibly attain through drugs, I knew that this aping of a perceived ideal of manhood didn’t sit well with him because he is, at heart, a gentle soul. Every person he introduces on the show is a ‘good friend’. Every small victory on the show is celebrated with a round of hugs and high fives.
This article perfectly encapsulates the thoughts and feelings of being way too high and watching TV.
CJW: This is the Ben McLeay of the Australian left-wing political podcast Boonta Vista Socialist Club. It’s one of my favourite podcasts - they do a great job of sledging piece-of-shit Australian politicians and Conservative commentators. (Which is not to say that Conservative commentators shouldn’t be given a platform, but when their opinions are morally bankrupt and intellectually half-baked [pun totally intended], they deserve every bit of derision they receive.) The bants are pretty good too.
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CJW: Automated warehouse with only 4 human employees - Steve LeVine at Axios
(Robots are people too, you know.)
JD.com, a Chinese e-commerce gargantuan, has built a big new Shanghai fulfillment center that can organize, pack and ship 200,000 orders a day. It employs four people — all of whom service the robots.
Goddamn, it's like they’ve already read my next book...the one that I'm still writing.
Books
MJW: I just finished Carmen Maria Machado's 'Her Body and Other Parties', and it's a tightly-written, genre-spanning collection of stories. Pulsing and alive, Machado's 'Inventory' and 'The Husband Stitch' are standouts, though all the stories give me the neat little satisfied closure that I love in great short fiction. I’m always a little gleeful when short story collections do well, being a huge fan of the form. If you like HBAOP, check out Karen Joy Fowler’s ‘What I Didn’t See’ and Kij Johnson’s ‘At the Mouth of the River of Bees’.
CJW: I’ve not read the book, but Carmen Maria Machado recently appeared at the Wheeler Centre, and the interview/reading/discussion was great. Thankfully, the Wheeler Centre put just about all of their events up on their podcast.
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MKY: You’d never guess it from my bio, but I’m all about Cixin Liu Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy rn. Been stalled for reasons, but looking fwd to diving back into book 3, Death’s End, as I ride the 86 tram, dressed in all in black but for my green glasses.
Movies + TV
CJW: I put Flint Town on in the background while I worked last week, after a recommendation from Dan Hill. I’m certain it’s meant to show the police in a positive light, humanise them, et cetera, but really, fuck tha police. To be more specific - fuck these white cops any time they open their mouths to talk about race or politics. (I would also be completely unsurprised if in the future it came out that the police chief was embezzling funds. I don’t know, something about him is too slick, you know?)
And then the internal fear-mongering by the police when some cops are shot in other parts of the country. No wonder police are so frightened that they shoot unarmed black children - their superior officers end a meeting by telling them, in no uncertain terms, that they’re in a war against some mysterious enemy. It’s not serve and protect, it’s shock and awe, the militarised police on full display, and it is disgusting.
This one image sums up so much of what is wrong with American policing, and is also pure ethanol poured onto the small flame of a story idea I’m currently cooking. (It’ll be a satirical comic, in the ultra-violent 80s style if I ever manage to pull it off the way I hope.)
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MJW: Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette just dropped onto Netflix, and if you like your comedy served up with a fistful of truth punched into your heart, it’s worth a watch. Starts out the standard stand-up fare, playing the tension/laughter binary, but hold out because it becomes so much more. A piece of art to leave you speechless, Gadsby crams more emotion into an hour than is safe to consume in a year.
CJW: It’s not fair to call Nanette a comedy special. It’s so much more than that, so much bigger. It’s a beautiful, powerful, heartbreaking, scathing takedown of our society, of the patriarchy, of men in power. Of men, in general, if they follow the same toxic paths.
I only recently discovered Barry Crimmins thanks to the Call Me Lucky documentary (also on Netflix) - but here in Nanette, Hannah Gadsby has not only performed the angriest and most honestly brutal piece of “angry comedy” in history, but she also took steps to distance herself from angry comedy, and to point out its dangers. It’s not a special everyone should watch - people who have survived abuse, rape, assault will possibly find it triggering - but it’s powerful and important.
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MKY: I caught former local boy Leigh Whannel’s latest film Upgrade the other night, and if you like ultraviolent transhuman revenge movies… it delivers and then some. It has the best depiction of a grinder bar I’ve ever seen outside of the pages of Doktor Sleepless. I have so much more to say about this film as soon as I find the time.
Podcasts
AA: Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump
Mark Frauenfelder - founder of Boing Boing, Make guru and co-host with Kevin Kelly of the excellent Cool Tools podcast - is a real inspiration to me. I love his inquisitive way of approaching the world, and he has a clear passion for the things he blogs about, without ever being cliquey or elitist. The “Really Interesting Authors” podcast has been on hiatus for a while, but I hope it’s back for good. In this episode, Mark talks to author Gary Lachman about his book “Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump”. They mainly cover the alt-right’s belief in “meme magick” and the occult Traditionalist philosophy of Putin advisor Alexander Dugin. Frauenfelder and Lachman’s conversation is fascinating, and Mark’s unintrusive and genuine style of interviewing allows the very knowledgeable Lachman to share his ideas about the occult roots of the current Authoritarian moment in global culture. “Really Interesting Authors” is a pleasure to listen to and I really hope Mark makes more soon!
CJW: If you have any interest in modern occultism you’ve definitely come across Pepe Meme Magick in your internet travails, but in this interview, Gary Lachman goes into some other stuff that has been going on in the background, that sounds utterly fascinating. It’s definitely a book I want to check out now, so job well done. Sounds like it could be to Aleksandr Dugin what Hypernormalisation was to Sirkov - revealing obscure Russian movers and shakers to an audience familiar with their actions if not their identities and motivations.
MKY: Yeah, he’s been doing the podcast circuit with that book. Already listened to him being interviewed on Rune Soup and Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio. Been lowkey following Dugin for a while - I nearly bought one of his books even - and it’s good to see this belatedly getting some attention.
The Process
CJW: Writing can be tough. It can be even tougher when you convince yourself constantly that nothing you do will ever be Good Enough. The link is to a fairly personal blog post from an early career writer (me) trying to cope with inadequacy and expectation.
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AA: I’m currently in the midst of setting up a small independent press (about which you’re going to be hearing quite a bit in this newsletter over the coming months) and it has been a fascinating journey so far. The research process has lead me into investigating the world of typography, something I had never spent much time considering in depth before.
Although he’s most definitely out of my league price-wise, I am really enamoured with the work of David Rudnick. His work is very distinctive - most recently he contributed to the design of Oneohtrix Point Never’s excellent “Age Of…” album, and his typefaces feel very narratively-driven to me, in that his lettering tells a story of its own, loaded with historical/cultural significance without resorting to overt parody or being derivative.
Here’s some of Rudnick’s typography work on an OPN poster:
If there are any weirdo typographic designers out there reading this who would like to be involved in my mysterious publishing project, please hit Reply and get in touch!
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MJW: I’m currently in a state of Too Many Things. I’ve just finished a three-book series (The Orphancorp series, though most of it is not set in an Orphancorp, you can’t control what people decide to call things) and now I’m moving on to the Next Thing, which at the moment, actually is three projects I desperately want to work on. I’m not known for my focus, and I’m wondering if this is a delightful form of self-sabotage, or the start of an amazing period of creative prosperity? WHO KNOWS. Stay tuned.
The Self-Promotion
MKY: My interview with Corey J. White - look out, he’s behind you - is out in this month’s Aurealis.
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CJW: We're officially in the second half of the year now. Things couldn't possibly get any worse, right? Check on your loved ones - it can get rough out there, and we've only got each other.
And feel free to drop me a line - let me know what you thought of this issue.