we’ve got human beings on the dark side of the moon but microsoft word will still not let me add a comment to a footnote

it's gotta be moons haunted

Cruelty is anhedonic. It rarely delivers the euphoria promised because, in the abstract, what feels righteous and joyful inevitably reveals itself to be sordid and small. Then it's "No not like that". "No not enough". "No the real battle, the forever war to make this feel good starts now". Forever.

They Killed Normal and Called It Progress Julia Roberts, Applebee's, Bandcamp, your manager, and the death of everything in between. (Also, Sweetgreen is the A24 of dining and I will die on this hill.)

This is very good, on how we got rid of all the middle-of-the-road stuff and will come to regret it.

Via @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com's also very good newsletter which you should subscribe to

open.substack.com/pub/readfoun...

in case you've never seen it, this is Roger Ebert on The Mummy

As always

the slightly niche version of this that haunts me is the lack of almost any international newspapers in airports now

and people thought my masters in medieval and renaissance studies wouldn't be useful...

A SKELATEN WHO DOSENT KNOW WHAT THEY DID , " CANT REMEMBER MOST OF MY LIFE, CANT REMEMBER YESTERDAY" WHERE DID I GO? 2009? 2011? 2003? 1997? WHAT DID I DO? 2006? NOVEMBER? 2014? 1998? 2:00PM? 10:00AM? EVERY ONE OR JUST ME?????? - WELL WHAT IS IT AM I ALL FUCKED UP OR DOES EVERY ONE DO THIS AND IF I WAS THERE WHY DONT I REMEMBER, I KNOW I HAD TO HAVE GONE TO WORK SOME OF THOSE YEARS BUT WHAT WAS I DOING AT ANY SPECIFIC POINT??? ITS MY LIFE WHY DONT I KNOW?????? IS THAT REALLY GONE THRU DA "HOLES IN DA SWISS CHEESE OF DA MIND" - SEEMS UNFAIR IDK - DASHARE.ZONE ADMIN

??????? - dashare.zone ADMIN

Yes I know

Repeatedly asking the supermarket staff for a 'chocolate battle pass' and feigning misunderstanding when they ask if I mean 'advent calendar'

Man Who Thought Fleetwood Mac’s ‘The Chain’ Was Over In For Thrill Of His Fucking Life

Man Who Thought Fleetwood Mac’s ‘The Chain’ Was Over In For Thrill Of His Fucking Life theonion.com/man-who-thought-fleetwoo...

this week's newsletter is titled "aren't you tired of feeling insane all the time?" and I think it speaks for itself

it is also free to read

youngvulgarian.substack.com/p/arent-you-...

A map with gritters on it called William Wall-ice, grit tok, Gritney Spears and The Grittist Snowman

A map with gritters on it called I've grit a crush on you, grit a bit, polar patroller, I want to break freeze

A map with gritters on it called bear chills, thistle do icely

A map with gritters on it called Gritallica, Olaf snow free roads, salt shaker and sled zepplin

It's the most wonderful time of the year: Scotland's gritter tracker is back! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿❄️🧊

www.traffic.gov.scot/gritter-trac...

i had a roll and fried egg with potato scone for breakfast 🍳

i met a journalist who was having the same predicament, seeing an oddly aggravating play and then finding no food. at several points i thought, this is fucking ridiculous, but everything had the appearance of places and things that i knew, and when i woke up, felt more like memories than dreams

ah, but the dog is a regular, they said. so i wandered into the lobby, ravenous. there was something happening in the grand hall but it wasn't clear if it was a wedding or a wake, so i was too scared to raid the buffet. it seemed late, but when i found myself walking outside it was still daytime

a man at the next table was rude to the staff, and i berated him, hoping this would earn me even a packet of crisps. it didn't. a stunning woman came in with a setter with the manner of an afghan hound. dotingly, the staff made it a ham sandwich. please, i begged, you've just made that dog some food

the staff changed every time i asked for food, snacks, anything, and always a different excuse. there was food only between 11-3, and it was now 8, even though i'd been there for hours. it was a turkish restaurant, and somehow no food was the custom. they brought me a pint I'd ordered hours ago.

i realised i was alone, and hungry, and wandered into the lounge of an old-fashioned hotel that i felt like I'd stayed in before. the bartender gave me a double whisky without asking, but, really, i was hungry. for a while it seemed like i was alone, then suddenly the tables around me were full.

it was daytime outside the theatre and i walked out with a girl i both knew and didn't, trying (badly) to describe how the staging had been meant to look like a human skull, as though that explained anything. when she spoke she only referred to things and people by initials i didn't recognise.

i dreamt i was at a beckett play with too many characters, and at the final curtain, one was robert carlyle. he was disappointed to see me in the crowd. women in the next row were angry after, as if they'd been ambushed by something they hadn't expected, stormed into the lobby and demanded refunds.

i'm on what i believe the medical term is 'a fucktonne' of antihistamines, and having the most mundane yet bizarre dreams.

i told my partner and he said 'have you considered writing vignettes or short stories' - god forbid anyone actually reads them, so i will tell you here:

A vaguely vampiric mari tonight (inspired by the visual fest of coppolas dracula)
I’m not sure its blood, most likely wine given maris perchant for booze

a colleague: i like grammarly, it makes such helpful suggestions that make my writing more concise

me, with two masters degrees in literature: *staring down 'use the correct version' like ron swanson in home depot*

doing a book sale for local charities as we inch toward completion on the library - send me all your unwanted books please and thank you 🙏🏼

No Talk, I’m Sleepy Unfortunately, the spotted garden eel. With regret, the lark. My apologies, the dark bleating of winter, the vice-like grip of my heart. How language deserts me, its most faithful engineer, its very best silly sod. There is altogether too much of everything. The light is only pretending to get out of bed. Where is my soup and hibernation? Why am I expected to be? I have become a dormouse. Undisturbed until spring.

Reposting this poem here for @thelabandfield.bsky.social who retweets it every winter. Yet again, I'm wondering where *is* my soup and hibernation?

Nine Inch Nails "Art is Resistance" flyer, 2007. The Art is Resistance flyer, designed by 42 Entertainment with art direction by Trent Reznor and me, was plastered around cities to draw players of the NIN “Year Zero” ARG to real-world gatherings, secret meetings of “the resistance” in the Year Zero fiction, but also a very real mechanism to plant the seeds of real-world activism into a story about what the future might look like if more people didn’t “wake up and give a shit.” Unfortunately, the future turned out almost exactly like what we imagined in Year Zero, but the message - that art is resistance, and you have a voice - is more important than ever.

Question (u/tiktock34): What do you think is the most powerful combination of art and music today, given our political climate? Im thinking of movements similar to the "Art is Resistance" type of message. Lots of music and lots of artists but its clear you are passionate about the blend. Also, thanks for the years! Huge fan Rob Sheridan: I think about this a lot, and wonder what the role of art should be in this particular moment of resistance. It's weird to look back at the NIN Year Zero ARG and "Art is Resistance" campaign from 2007 and see that the future took the bad path anyway, almost eerily to a tee. Not that I expected an album to change the future or anything, but at the bleakest of times I couldn't help but second-guess if art did matter anymore in terms of actually affecting change; if I should have been more involved with organizing or with direct action, if we were deluding ourselves in thinking we were doing anything more than a cool art project. But then, year in and year out, again and again, right now included, fans tell me - more than any other project I ever worked on, by far - how much Year Zero meant to them, how much the Art is Resistance campaign inspired them, how it changed the way they viewed the intersection of music and politics. They show me the AiR flag tattoos, their numbers from the ARG, the friends they made through the process, the paths they took after - some even met their future spouses! And it reminds me that yeah, what we did mattered, because a lot of fans were radicalized by that experience to be more politically-aware and think more like activists, and a lot of artists were emboldened to speak out more. 1/3 Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1o89qtx/comment/njtmeg9/

These days artists/celebs are expected to have an opinion on everything and will even get called out for not speaking up on some things, but back in the early 2000s there was this real cynicism about music being "political." Bands would get so much backlash and told to "stick to music" if they voiced political opinions. I'm proud I helped NIN be one of the bands of the era to really break through that barrier on With Teeth and then demolish it completely on Year Zero, and help a lot of fans come around to how fundamentally intertwined art and politics have always been. And today? I don't think there's any right or wrong way to combine art / music with message, because I think just making art - any kind of art - is a crucial part of the resistance we need right now. At the core of the fascist project is the removal of intellectual and artistic freedoms, and that tells you all you need to know about how much art matters. Between the billionaire techbros & CEOs showing how much they revile creators by racing to gut their livelihoods, and the grotesquely ugly, unfunny, uncreative anti-aesthetics of the right-wing movement, a systemic disdain for the arts and sciences is stronger than it's ever been. In a moment like this, we all have to keep making human art and connecting around human art, whether it's aggressive music that calls the fuckers out directly or just cute drawings of cats that make people smile. I know artists who are making very direct and provocative protest art; speaking truth to power loudly and directly is important, but it's not everyone's lane and it's not the only way to use art right now. 2/3 Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1o89qtx/comment/njtmeg9/

I also know musicians who are just carrying on with their shows without really speaking out specifically, because they know how many vulnerable people are in their audiences going to their shows for strength and community, and they don't want to put additional targets on those peoples' backs. Protecting your community matters, too. For my own part, thinking about all of this over the past year was a big motivation in doing my art book right now. The feeling of not being sure who I should be or what I should say as an artist in this moment, how much it matters, and finding along the way that some of the art I was making that was really connecting with people and helping them, was art that wasn't literal with a specific message, it just honestly evoked the way I was feeling and the way I think a lot of people are feeling. The catharsis of feeling together, of knowing you're not alone in the way you feel, of seeing artists who matter to you also feeling the same thing; that gives strength, and strength is power. It's okay to check out to take care of yourself. And it's okay to find joy in music, art, movies, games, books, sports right now. I'd say it's crucial to find joy, more than ever. They're counting on you sacrificing joy, because then you lose hope, and then you lose the strength to fight back. Art is resistance, and joy is defiance. If your little drawing of a cat brought you or someone else some joy today, that matters. They want you to give up. Keep. Making. Art. Rob Sheridan, 16 Oct 2025 Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1o89qtx/comment/njtmeg9/

Nine Inch Nails “Art is Resistance” flyer (2007), with some thoughts on what it means today that came up in my recent Q&A. #NoKings ✊