The Newsletter About Nothing

Plus hexes, 90s nostalgia AND TOTE BAGS!

Hi, Friends! It’s been a month and I’m OK with that even though it flies in the face of popular “growth” advice for newsletters, which is usually:

• “Be consistent! Send emails once or twice a week so people don’t forget about you!”

• “Niche down! Talk about the same thing over and over so you don’t confuse people!”

Here’s a collage I made last week just to confuse you.

It’s the same advice I give work clients without doing it myself. (Kinda like the pharmacist who gave me the bivalent booster yesterday and said he hasn’t gotten one, even though he doesn’t “have anything against it.”)

Honestly, I feel bad every time I email you but sharing my sundry thoughts is a compulsion I’ve had since doing homemade zines in the 90s (Sporegasm {founder} and Sassy Gothic Babe {contributor}) and my early-aughts, indie sleaze-adjacent blogspot.com (Holler at Your Girl, K?)

If I’m not feeling something, I can’t expect you to feel it, so I won’t bother hitting you with weekly recaps of my boring middle-aged mom life or hot takes on other people’s hard work.

I also trust you not to forget about me and just embrace the confusion. (Now’s a good time to remind you of the unsubscribe link below if not. No hard feelings.)

Boomy Drums in a Big Room: More of that 90s alt-teen life

Few things made me happier (back then and now) than the opening track of pretty much any Steve Albini album. He has a knack for making it feel like you are in the same room with a band playing in real time and still sounding clear and tight. I guess you could call that his niche?

If you’re not familiar, listen to a little bit of Bone Machine, Serve the Servants, Little Fury or Glorious to see what I mean.

Why are we talking about this? Well, I just stumbled on this excellent letter Albini wrote to Nirvana (of the Forever 21 t-shirts) before recording In Utero, and realized Albini probably never sat down and hashed out his brand story or content strategy like, “I make records for chubby suburban girls with acne to help them feel like they’re sitting in a Pixies rehearsal.”

He did what he liked, and if others liked it too? Great.

Do you see what I’m doing here? I am calling myself the Steve Albini of Substack.

And this concludes my meta-ranting newsletter neurosis.

Let’s talk tote bags.

I finally made some swag for Rhetorica, my brand strategy & copywriting business. Do you want one? They’re free.

While viewing these expertly staged merch pics you may be wondering: are these Halloween themed? Is that a Pumpkin Spice logo? The answer is yes but it wasn’t intentional.

There were some hiccups with the printer so we received a 10% discount. The lesson in digital vs. physical proofs however was invaluable.

Short story: that big R was supposed to be more of a 70s copper than Autumn gourd orange. Not ideal, but good enough (another potential niche for me.) And you know what they say: ship ship, ship anyway!

We’ll end this edition with the internet’s most fascinating links, but for more Halloween spirit I’ve compiled A Spooky List of Deeply Disturbing Things I’ve encountered recently:

1. This voicemail hex I received from a random caller.

According to an Israeli friend, the first part is spoken in Hebrew and the rest is pure ooga-booga cursedness. Listen at your own risk! (99% of friends to whom this voicemail was forwarded refused to listen to the whole thing because they feared a secondhand hex, regardless of their cultural background. I’m talking Haitian, Russian, Lucian, and Sindhi Indian. Gotta hand it to the Israelis on this one…)

My best guess is it’s an angry newsletter subscriber who thinks I should niche.

2. At my local deli earlier this week, I waited on line behind a full-grown human woman who ordered egg salad on a cinnamon raisin bagel. It shook me to my core.

I had to know more about her. What kind of car does she drive? What does her house look like? She ordered egg salad on a cinnamon raisin bagel — does the rest of her life look just as kooky?

But this is New York. Everyone walks, most apartment buildings in a given neighborhood are too similar to reveal anything about the tenant’s personal life, and we’re too distracted to invest so much time and curiosity in other people. (Unless you are Anne Kadet. Please read her recent profile of Diane.)

Some links:

• Tacky Weed Bodegas

• Overheard at Goldman Sachs

• The New York Times finally put “Clitoris” in a headline.

• Colleen Hoover just skipped the “auspicious rise” part and jumped straight to “publishing phenomenon.” Has anyone here read her books? Are they worth it?

• The Twisted Life of Clippy. (Again with the 90s.)

• And for final 90s rock-nerdery, this video essay is the most poignant and genius-ly executed pieces of content that I’ve watched multiple times, and I’m not even a Weezer fan.

Maybe next time I’ll talk about the future. Who knows! There’s no agenda here. ‘Til then.