Hey y’all,

If you want to know the state of my mind, I’ve been copying the messages from old horror movie trailers into my diary.

Here are this week’s 10 things:

1. The creativity to be found in defining yourself based on what you won’t do.
   
   

2. Pushing back against techno-optimism: “It is stupid to be categorically against technology. It is not stupid to be suspicious of technology.” (This post was inspired, believe it or not, by watching a lot of DuckTales and reading Carl Barks’ Uncle Scrooge comics with the kids.)
   
   

3. How John Steinbeck tricked his kids into reading ”great books.”
   
   

4. There’s a new remixed 30th anniversary edition of Dave Hickey’s 1993 collection of essays on beauty, The Invisible Dragon. It’s never been my favorite of Hickey’s books, so I think it’s both bold and shrewd of editor Gary Kornblau to mix in five previously uncollected Hickey works on topics such as Dolly Parton and Richard Pryor with the original essays. (For the record: my favorite Hickey is Air Guitar.)
   
   

5. Explosions from old comic books.
   
   

6. Seen a lot of people lately complaining about long movies. I highly recommend my method of intermissions: watching half a movie now and half a movie later.

   
   

7. Chill studio music: It’s been gloomy and rainy out and I’ve been playing the reissue of Hiroshi Yohimura’s 1986 ambient album, Surround. (I asked Santa for this 3-record Yohimura bundle for Christmas — now that even Bandcamp is dying I am doubling down on physical media.)

   
   

8. A poem I loved: Simon Armitage’s “Poetry.” (Scroll to the bottom of Alan’s post.)
   
   

9. RIP actor Richard Roundtree, star of Shaft.
   
   

10. “It actually takes a daily effort to be free.”
    

Thanks for reading. This is a hand-rolled, algorithm-free, completely reader-supported publication. If you’d like to support my work, buy my books, hire me to speak, or become a paid subscriber:

xoxo,

Austin