I’m excited to announce that November 2021: vol. IV will be print-only! I’ve been wanting to do a print edition for a while, so I’m taking this week to finish working on it. It’ll be like a normal issue—it is *not* a compilation—but on paper, a little longer, and with some contributions from friends.
If you’d like to get your hands on this—exclusive! print-only! hand-bound!—issue, please email me with a mailing address and how many copies you’d like.
Also, December 1 (next Wednesday) is the one-year anniversary of this newsletter! I will be celebrating with a martini or several at The Long Island Bar. I’ll be there from 7:30pm onward with a stack of print issues. So come by if you’d like to say hello, have a drink, and pick up a copy. [this was fun! thanks for coming]
If this one goes well, there may be more in the future, so stay tuned.
ben tapeworm
on the turntable
Eric Hurtgen—the esteemed and gracious designer of this newsletter’s very own mark—did the album cover artwork and packaging for the new Sting record, The Bridge. Kudos to Eric and the whole creative team!
from the discourse
Documentaries get unwarranted sequels, the Aztec Empire gets new histories, and Mexico gets its citizens’ biometric data. They want more megaspiders? Adorno the algorithmist? The FBI (surprise) got the wrong guys. Coincidences can make great beginnings. Death and grief in World of Warcraft. The end of girlboss messiness. No face left un-yassified! Web3 is cool but the crypto-bros are not. Neither are the… eco-fascists. Jeff Bezos fancies himself a storyteller. Hayao Miyazaki is one.
from the white house
Trump may be gone but the incoherence of American political rhetoric remains. Mumbling his way through bad jokes at the annual Turkey Pardoning, Biden declared that “instead of getting basted, these two turkeys are getting boosted” and that “Fer, fork— folks, turkey is infrastructure. Peanut Butter and Jelly are going to help Build Back the Butterball as we move along.” It is all very silly, so one wonders why it must end in Soul-of-America platitudes: “it’s important to continue traditions like this to remind us how from darkness there is light and hope and progress.” Ok, whatever, Happy Thanksgiving.
from my incoming texts
“What an uninterested commentary on an interesting publication”
“Like if a friend said, “im having my birthday at spritzenhaus!” how annoyed would you be on a scale of 1-10”
“May we all walk out of the desert with a wee smile and a love for cock 💗”
“there is also something here about how lots of streaming-era artists eventually learn and understand the mechanisms of commerce in order to have careers, but there seems to be basically no flow of empathy back in the other direction”
“Bean is living like a king”
weekly wiki
Join us on Discord and Twitter. Read back about the death of storytelling, the end of 2020, and our age of disasters. Grab a print issue.