It’s February – the gloomiest month, which seems insane to say after the 150 day January we just had. Things to look forward to are . . . candy? I guess? Only 28 days until the ALLEGED first month of spring? An inevitable bro fight between the corniest fucking clowns in the world that are in charge of the American government right now?
With all that in mind, I decided I needed A LITTLE TREAT for my SOUL so I bought a bird feeder with a camera in it. Speaking of corny rich people!!! This thing is called the Bird Buddy and I spent an embarrassing amount of money on it. I scoured my yard for the perfect spot and got myself tangled in dead tree branches installing it and spent hours on the internet scouring the best food for BAY AREA BIRDS and patiently waited for approximately one hour and guess what!! No fucking birds!!! This shit is piled high with BLACK OIL SUNFLOWER SEEDS and FREEZE DRIED MEALWORMS and these San Francisco asshole birds are too good for it!
Brandon told me that it clearly says in the manual that it can take anywhere from a week to a month for birds to find a new feeder, let alone get their selfies snapped in one, but I AM NOT APPEASED. The American Dream (brought to you by Totino’s Pizza Rolls) has assured me that if I spend the money, the birds will come! And I can immediately post their cute little pics to X THE EVERYTHING APP and get my little dopamine shots of boomers arguing over the bird ID’s and Nazis reminding me that the white birds are being overrun by the brown ones! Then I can go over to INSTA META and get a lecture on checking my yard privilege and a humble brag from someone with a more established bird habitat criticizing the brand of dried worms I bought.
In case I’m being too subtle, a thing that I have never in my life actually been accused of, I’m feeling very disillusioned about social media right now. I love writing newsletters and long form posts, and I want to keep doing that, but the social grind has got me down. I’m trying to get a handle on the best way to publish going forward, and I’m open to any ideas or thoughts that you all have. One idea we are kicking around is just opening the blog for comments. I love interacting with everyone, I’m just exhausted by the platforms. Are you guys down for old school blog action? Let me know!!
In the meantime, here are some things I’ve collected over the last couple of weeks that I think you’ll enjoy. Some sucka free items to take your mind off the world (sort of).
The Curious Case of… The Funeral Home of Horrors
Streaming on Max The Curious Case of… is a new Max series that started off covering the Natalia Grace orphan situation, and has branched out into other crazy Inside Edition type shit. The host is this aggressively blonde lawyer, Beth Karas, who feels like Nancy Grace’s good twin. She is absolutely incredulous at every single thing that happens in these episodes, and you know, same. One of the episodes covers the horrific mismanagement case of The Return to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado. Funeral home scandals happen like, once a year, and a lot of them are cases of people who just get overwhelmed. Sometimes the managers are elderly, sometimes heirs take these businesses over and don’t know how to handle them, but this one was just outright fraud. It’s horrifying to watch, especially when scenes from the owner’s terrible stand up comedy act are spliced in among mummified bodies stacked like firewood in a broken refrigerator. It’s no good! But also, ITS GOOOOD.Nosferatu and the Gothic Appetite
Listen, I loved Nosferatu – obviously – and I have devoted many hours to long form essays about the sets, the costumes, the adaptation, etc etc etc. I also love a literary deep dive and Princess Weekes never misses. If you’ve seen any of the tedious online discourse about the sexual morals of the movie, you need to see Princess’ take. This is a super smart and entertaining piece, and video essays like this are why YouTube is my favorite channel.
The Summerville Light
South Carolina is like, ground zero for ghosts, which makes sense when you think about the sordid history of slavery in that state. You know my theory – the harder you try to repress the past, the louder it’s going to come back. And apparently, in a town called Summerville, it comes back as a haunting light that is PROBABLY produced by small earthquakes and the release of electrical currents and gas into the air. That is cool as hell!
Frankenstein, Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds
The original 1818 text of Mary Shelley’s classic novel, with annotations and essays highlighting its scientific, ethical, and cautionary aspects from The MIT Press
One of the many things that’s been irritating me over the last decade of child rearing is the relentless, single minded focus on STEM in education. Like yes, we need our kids to learn math and science, but the disregard for humanities is really starting to show its ass. Remember all those books about fascism that we, Generation X, read in school? Fahrenheit 51, 1984, Animal Farm – were people not paying attention? Were you all falling asleep during the endless WWII documentaries they screened in history class?
I attended a talk about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein recently (THIS IS WHAT I DO FOR FUN WHEN I’M NOT ON YOUTUBE) and learned about this annotated version of the book, put out by MIT press for scientists. STEM babies, how are you going to know that your creation has gone amok if you haven’t read the classics? That LLM you stitched together through stolen body parts of artistic works and brought to life with a massive climate destroying server farm would like a word. And do NOT give it a girlfriend, either!!!