Jeezus Christo, Is Blogging Back?
For your presumed entertainment, verbal masturbation is back with a vengeance. Do we still care?
I hate blogs. I will forever blame the sudden onslaught of free content back in the early aughts for eroding the integrity of writing and slicing my income in half. But last year, Substack newsletters—basically the monetized version of blogs 2.0—were the thing so many writers felt they had to do to make a sustainable living with words.
The thing about these blogs rebranded as newsletters is you can’t just pop in at will—you have to commit by paying and subscribing to show your writer friends you love them. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to do that.
I’m more of a casual gal, and I believe in the pop-in. Since Medium made it easier to create bespoke content (wank speak for a customizable CSS platform), I’ve been entertaining the idea of sliding back on here on a weekly basis to — quite honestly—jack off my thoughts about what’s entertained me that week. Of course, this presumes you might care enough to peruse them over a latte when you’re supposed to be baking your concealer for your umpteenth Zoom or whatever.
So, here, you’ll find my mental jizz for free, whenever I feel like writing it. Sorry-not sorry—paid work comes first. Pardon the clumsy pun.
Gratitude List, 11/11
- I am grateful for a Biden/Harris presidency. BEYOND grateful. DER. This is the most obvious, yet most potent thing we can all be grateful for. I am confident they will lead us toward the light, and not in a Carol Ann/Poltergeist-y kind of way. Everyone I know and love is cautiously, hissing out a sigh of relief like a slowly leaking balloon: Black people, Brown people, Women, LGBTQI, immigrants of any shade, COVID victims, anyone with any sort of medical condition, or anyone who cares about the world beyond themselves. Kamala Harris will be President too, mark my words. I don’t know about you, but that plug-in replacing Trump’s face with pix of kittens served my mental health well these past four years. I can’t wait to see what life is like with a hot, righteous woman in power. Dare I say I can already feel my shoulders slowly easing away from my ears?
- The HBO Max “Gossip Girl” reboot must be well underway because we were served with these Met steps pix today and Glamour did a good job of rounding up the deets for context. The kid front and center best be Henry Bass. XOXO!
- Perhaps, like me, you’ve been too distracted by myriad forces of impending doom to note a new season of “Sex Education” has been quietly filming in the bucolic English countryside. If so, this trailer should give you a few minutes of joy.
- I loved “The Forty-Year Old Version” — particularly how it depicted the deeply embedded, gritty bullshit of racism and ageism. So I wrote a piece for Shondaland that digs into ageism and what we can do to push back. In my digging, I found, according to one study, as many as 36 percent of workers felt their age kept them from getting a job since turning 50, yet somehow, by 2024, 25 percent of the workforce will be 55 and older, with the fastest annual growth rates among those aged 65 and up? How the hell are those numbers supposed to reconcile? We GenXers may have been apathetic in our youth, and as much as I like smelling me some roses, I dare say a good number of us aren’t willing to let the dust collect on our brain cells and go quietly off onto our metaphorical unemployment lines. Which brings us back to the glory that is Kamala Harris—the first GenX’er in the White House. Yeah, yeah, she was born in 1964, but as this piece in Rolling Stone so aptly points out, so was Courtney Love.
- Finally, “The Queen’s Gambit” on Netflix is a decidedly fantastic feminist tale full of masterful acting or storytelling. If you haven’t yet, get on that tout suite.
Stay gold, Ponyboy! Until we meet again.
V
