First, Tha NEWS.

First things first:

The Chicago Reader's "Best of Chicago" issue came out last week. I'm not in it. I just thought I'd mention it. My friend's queer country band did make it, though, again.

As for me, well, I got another acceptance letter, which is nice. I have no idea when that will be out (more pieces from 22 CARDS), but I'll let you know. Incidentally, I've decided on a final title for the project: 22 Cards and Other Ephemera. It came to me as sort of a cutting-the-Gordian-Knot strike of lightning, in that it says both exactly what it is and doesn't require me to stay contained to a certain type of non-Tarot content. Which is good, because currently I have non-Tarot poems, essays, a couple lists, a frontispiece straight-up stolen from Jack Spicer, and so on, and I have no idea how many of those bits are going to end up in the final page count. So. Keeping it vague, while also being accurate.

This past weekend I drove to Madison on a day trip to attend the opening reception for the Wisconsin 2026 Creative Power Showcase as friend of the program Renee Ondine has a couple pieces in the show. And! I got to meet Renee in real life for the first time in nearly 20 years of friendship. Never let anyone tell you the internet isn't real.

On Wednesday I attended an alumni event for Columbia College Chicago Creative Writing folks. It was nice seeing some familiar faces, and it felt a lot more personable than most alumni bullshit I get from the college. I got to see a few folks I haven't seen in ages, found out some of them live not to far from me, and got to hear what some of the newer grads have been doing.

Outside of those things, I've been largely distracting myself from the news with projects. Last time around I mentioned Dumpster Mac (the Macintosh what I pulled from a dumpster), and now I have almost everything I want to and can put on it installed, and I've nearly completely rearranged my workstation to be more of a studio space. I've also purchased one of these:

A TEAC A-4300SX stereo reel-to-reel tape deck. I don't think I've mentioned this before, but several years ago I picked up a Sony reel-to-reel machine at Green Element Resale here in Chicago, with the intention of cleaning up and using it to record some final mixes to for REAL AUTHENTIC TAPE SOUND(TM) and general analog tape goodness. Well, as it turns out, that Sony has a bit of a tracking problem that I can't quite solve and don't really want to spend the money to. So I spent that much plus a bit more to get a much more robust TEAC unit. It took some work, but it's mostly cleaned up now, and plays back nicely. I haven't tried to record anything with it, but the playback heads are in fine shape, so here's hoping for the record head to be good, too.

All this isn’t to say I haven't been writing. I have. It's just slow going because of all the everything outside all the time. But if you’re on the Patreon, I’ve posted some stuff over there.

Second, INTERLUDE.

Don't talk, watch
You came here, watch it
Don't like it? Walk out
We still have all your fucking money
~ Mastodon, “Cut You Up with a Linoleum Knife”

Third, CONSUMPTION.

• I bought everything available on Victor Jones' Bandcamp page this past Bandcamp Friday. It was the least I could do after skipping his gig at the Cobra Lounge last week (because I bought a tape deck and it mathed out cheaper this way.)

• Steam is having a big Square Enix publisher sale. Have you heard of the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV? With an expanded free trial which you can play through the entirety of A Realm Reborn and the award-winning Heavensward expansion up to level 70 for free with no restrictions on playtime. There's also a bunch of other Final Fantasy games. And Dragon Quest. And Life is Strange. Also, for some reason, PowerWash Simulator. You'll have so many games to not play, just like me!

• We watched Lord of the Rings: Return of the King Extended Edition as the kiddo had not finished the trilogy. I think it was my... third time watching it the whole way through? It is indeed still very, very long. Good, though. I definitely did not cry. Definitely.

• Picked up vinyl of both Florence + the Machine's Everybody Scream and Kylesa's Spiral Shadow. The former is of course fantastic and just me finally getting an album I've wanted since it was announced, and the latter is a vinyl replacement of a CD copy that I had that got ruined in a basement flood several years back. Kylesa is exactly the sort of music I had wanted to make when I was in a band, but I didn't know it at the time, and that ship has sailed, gone over the horizon, come back, gotten blown up, and sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Really good record, though.

Fourth, HUSTLE.

The new hotness is THE FAILURE EXPERIMENT, which you can get here. It’s a serial poem based in Philip K. Dick, JG Ballard, 20th Century cyberpunk, Jack Spicer, and, well, me.

There’s my chapbook, A Void and Cloudless Sky. By being a subscriber to this newsletter, you're also entitled to a free PDF version, which you can get here. If you want a hard copy, it’s available here.

If you're liking this whole project and want to support it directly, here is my Patreon. All paying subscribers receive access to all content I post there, for as little as $1.

Finally, THE OUTRO.

My latte has somehow gone cold and I only made it like ten minutes ago. It's weirdly cold in here. Damn fine coffee though. Maybe a bit over-extracted--my espresso machine is a $100 unit I bought a Goodwill for $15 about 5 years ago, so honestly I take what I can get in that sense. It's 11:30am as I write this, I've been up for about four hours all told, and I have only just had some toast to eat. I probably ought to get to some lunch, or at the very least some mozzarella sticks. Fuel is important for your growing body. You need it for that burning pit of rage right behind your solar plexus, where that righteous indignation lives. Our last installment here had a lot of downer shit in it. Things have really only gotten worse since then. War, oppression, economy going to shit, genocide, weird climate change effects. But you know what? We're still here. Still taking care of each other. Still creating, still existing. As long as we're doing that, them fuckers can't win.

Thanks for being here. See you in the next one.

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