year in review, links, brief musings on the future of art, the usual
Another year? Already? (Witcher voice) Hmm... fuck. I keep trying to write this newsletter and coming up totally empty. I don't have any neat themes or...
the road so far
Happy November 5th to all who observe!
the salmon and the trout
If you send me a video, odds are extremely high that I won't watch it. Sorry — it's just how I am. Ninety percent of the time, I see these things on my...
spooky paws
Something you may have noticed is that I don’t do a lot of writing about individual people. I write about demographics and places and trends and theories and...
sunday scaries < monday morbs
August, not to put too fine a point on it, is the worst month — not for everyone, just for me. In news it’s “silly season,” when nothing of actual importance...
the artist is absent
Lately I have been thinking — hello, by the way — about how online visibility seems to be the default. I don’t mean that in the political sense, though that...
[John Mulaney voice] You ever seen a ghost?????
If I started every one of these that came after an abrupt hiatus of unknown length with an apology for said hiatus of unknown length, that would literally...
okay maybe one more
(Source) This letter has two parts: the fun part and the personal part. This is the fun part. rowan morrison 🥭 @timesnew_rowanbetween the eight months of...
NO MORE MEMES BABY
I’M FREE
KEY RACE ALERT KEY RACE AL
What I would really like to be writing right now is an essay about the dual phenomenon of 1. white cis women voting for Trump in increasing numbers and 2....
"i ask if your rut has started and you’re laughing?"
Good morning!!! If you are reading this we are now in day FOUR OF NO ELECTION RESULTS. We are also living in the first moment of human history in twelve...
"am I oomf, Jesus?"
Okay — to be totally honest with you, even though everyone on the face of the Earth was like, “This is going to go on for weeks!” — I didn’t actually expect...
"cheese borger"
[puts my phone on airplane mode and then throws it into a woodchipper, just to be safe] Uhhh I guess you’re getting at least one more of these?...
"pined cone"
"Father is unyielding? Father is incapable of love?"
Ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!!!!! Hannah Hillam @HannahHillamFebruary 7th 2019974 Retweets1,778 Likes(About eight times a week I put on James McAvoy’s ludicrous louche...
"Ohhh!!"
For what it’s worth, I swear I did have some actual posts lined up to edit (eternal refrain) but then, you know, here we are. Here are today’s ten images,...
"i love effort.... and doing things"
Don’t worry, that doesn’t count as one of the ten. Here they are!(This one’s a twofer.)
no problem man! stay diabolical!
I have an album on my phone titled “Reactions.” It contains 4,363 images as of today. A lot of these images bring me enormous joy in times of stress. Last...
😬
no_children.mp3
The Best Pumpkin Pie I’ve Ever Had So first of all, cards on the table: I hate pumpkin pie. Most of it sucks. It tastes like chewed-up paper towels in a...
"Until the sun came up again"
Dylan and I have spent the last week watching all 14 currently extant seasons of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” in six days, so I have no thoughts...
"You just jump a little higher"
maple cocaine @maplecocaineEach day on twitter there is one main character. The goal is to never be itJanuary 3rd 201919,966 Retweets88,699 LikesI think...
"Free to spend eternity in the factory"
Dylan and I were in a liquor store yesterday picking up a bottle of wine for our coworker’s birthday. There was a clear sheet of plexiglass hanging in front...
"An astronaut could've seen the hunger in my eyes from space"
Lately Dylan and I have been parceling out ways to fill our time: shows we’ve meant to catch up on for years, laundry to do, plants to water, and so on. A...
"A space in the air only your bones could fill"
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what I want out of life, which I suppose is a natural effect of having currently unlimited time to contemplate what...
"If not by faith then by the sword"
Whose blood greases the wheels of your existence?I’ll go first. There are the retail workers at the food service distribution company where Dylan and I are...
"Simple hands"
I never said no, not once, not that I can remember, anyway, which is funny (by which I mean not funny) because one of the things I find most upsetting is...
"By foot it's a slow climb"
A few months ago, I remembered that the apartment building I lived in as a child had a basement. I spent a lot of time there, one way or another, between...
"Between the shore and the sea"
I’ve linked to Gabrielle Hamilton’s writing here before — on radishes with butter and salt — and last week I read another piece of hers that will stay with...
"Life just kind of empties out"
“We have to come back, and that’s what we’re aiming to do beginning on May 1,” Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) announced last week, which was why I spent half an...
"Any other world"
“Wait,” Dylan said, reading whatever the fuck I wrote and sent out the day before yesterday. “What do you mean, ‘at the beginning of this week’? Isn’t it…...
"Portions for foxes"
The beginning of this week is largely lost time for me, a handful of days that I remember in disjointed moments, shutter-flash images of places I went and...
“You’ll be better and you’ll be smarter”
I really, really loved being a woman. That’s a sentence I always end up overthinking: It sounds like an apologia for the fact that I’m not one, or not one...
"If the sun was always shining"
Granny looked up and down the square. “Besides, you can’t magic iron.”“That’s very true. Not iron. Now, someone like ole Black Aliss, they could make their...
"Come some sweet blue bonnet spring"
A funny thing about transition, for me, is that it perfectly mirrored my first adolescence despite involving an entirely different balance of hormones. First...
"One indescribable instant"
Nobody knew how to describe an instant like Natalie Babbitt, who in Tuck Everlasting describes the end of summer so perfectly that I’ve never been able to...
"I wasn't wandering in a storm"
It’s forsythia season in Cleveland. I keep forgetting that it’s spring at all and not autumn, and then I see a sheaf of bright yellow blooms and remember....
"Ever since we founded Rome"
For two months in 2018, I ran social media for a Cleveland-based lifestyle magazine that I check on every so often in the hopes that it’s folded for good. So...
"It's a Springsteen song"
Ravenna is a city in Ohio with a beautiful name, miles of space, and more horses than I’m used to seeing on an hourlong drive. It has its own Wikipedia page,...
"Oh, here is the rest of my life."
Everyone told us—and told us and told us—marriage is hard work, and compromise, and more work. Abandon all hope, ye who enter. Well, it’s not true.“They say...
"Because we have, and they have not"
Here is how I spent my last week of work before we closed the salon: telling one of my favorite coworkers that one of their closest friends is a rapist, and...
"Dear Forgiveness"
Sunday marked 13 days indoors. It was also the second day that I woke up with a level of anxiety that normally takes me several hours of consciousness to...
"Forget it, Jughead... it's quarantine"
Have you read my favorite post about Riverdale? Here it is. You should read it too, if you don’t mind spoilers. It’s a perfectly straightforward list of plot...
"Guarding my face"
Darnielle: I ask survivors when they come up to me at the merch line, “has your abuser died yet?” And they will say, “no” and I will say, “I want you to be...
"Or on the surface of a river or all over a building"
Jenny Holzer, 1980, hand-painted, enamel on metalI love the kind of phrase that sticks with you, becomes disembodied from its original context and takes on...
"You don't get to rehearse"
I’ve been talking (and writing) a big game about how this is one of those moments in history where everything changes, down to the smallest elements of the...
"And over goes the tiller once again"
A play I think about a lot is “Copenhagen,” by Michael Frayn. Apparently it has won some awards, including a Tony. Despite this, I don’t know if it’s a good...
"Bucket lists can wait"
I was hoping to get top surgery this year. In the grand scheme of things, I know, that isn’t such a big deal. I didn’t have the money to get it before...
"Hope is in helping others"
The other day one of my in-laws asked me if I ever miss journalism. “Not at times like these,” I said, which was the truth if only in a limited sense. I...
Ten that toil where one reposes
One of the absolute worst-case scenarios here is that the pandemic plays out however it inevitably will and then we all go back to the normal we thought of...