Work
Monday December 16, 2024
I don’t want to do it.
Pretty damn annoying this already went out because Substack’s scheduling tool didn’t work. Hope you ignored it the first time.
One Song: “Heigh-Ho” by Dwarf Chorus
First off, hilarious that this song is credited to “Dwarf Chorus” like Walt Disney himself hand-picked a choir of dwarf baritones.
More importantly, have you ever really listened to the lyrics? It’s some wildly insidious anti-labor shit:
We dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig
Up everything in sight
We dig up diamonds by the score
A thousand rubies, sometimes more
But we don't know what we dig 'em for
These dudes are digging up THOUSANDS OF RUBIES, SOMETIMES MORE, but they don’t know why, and they live in a hovel and sleep in the same bed together?! Is the Evil Queen Betsy DeVos? How did these poor men reach old age without ever learning the value of rubies and diamonds? Did they go to a charter school? Are they just shoveling these riches onto trains directly to the castle? I have so many questions, and I’m ready to organize.
One Quote: "Writing is a miserable, awful business. Stay with it. It is better than anything in the world." - Ann Patchett
My mom sent me this after reading the first post. She and Ann are write (pun intended, but not actually because I literally wrote “right” as “write” by accident, but it was such a perfect subconscious action I left it). Writing is my work, and it is work, and it is miserable sometimes to the point where I find it excruciatingly difficult and guilt-ridding to explain why I struggle with a job that allows me to sit with my dog on the couch all day.
One Image:
This image makes me feel violently ill.
One Book: The Greatest Generation by Tom Brokaw
I think all of us entering our middle 30s and looking at Gens Z and A have concluded that it’s a generational trope to think we’re doomed as soon as the young’uns come of age. After all, Gen X and the Boomers did us Millennials dirty with avocado toast.
Well, The Greatest Generation is the pinnacle of this thinking: a vehicle for very real war heroes to crap on their Gen X and Millennial children and grandchildren who don’t understand the values of patriotism, sacrifice, accountability, and hard work. These are the same people who invented Jim Crow and screamed the n-word at Ruby Bridges.
Can we just stop pretending like every generation besides our own is lazy?
One Hollywood: Trap, Max
Digital Trends asked me to write an article about the movie I hated most this year. I chose Trap, one of the stupidest movies I’ve ever seen, which somehow made The Ringer’s Top 10 Movies of 2024.
I’m forced to ask if M. Night Shyamalan has a picture of every film critic and studio executive in America participating in a puppy drowning convention. That’s the only explanation I can come up with for why this man receives $30 million every year to make the worst movie you’ve ever seen. Sadly, Trap grossed $80 million, so you know he’s coming back next year with a movie about whales that fish for humans or something.
I mean, I see all of his movies fully knowing they’re going to make me pray for a meteor strike, so maybe I’m the problem. Definition of madness and all that.
I think the article’s getting published on Wednesday, so I’ll link to it on Friday.
One Person: Arthur Weasley
I’m just gonna say it. Fuck this guy. Arthur, your job — your life’s mission — is to be the government’s foremost authority on Muggles. Sure, they don’t do diplomacy, but making cars fly and asking the literal Chosen One the purpose of a rubber duck while your people dip feathers into ink by candlelight, heat your homes with fireplaces, and send letters to each other via endangered species is not a good use of your working hours. You commute to London EVERY DAY; you didn’t think electricity, let alone cellular devices and friggin’ bombs, might be useful in an existential war? This man deserved to face a war tribunal for his criminal incompetence.
One Food: Lobster
I love lobster. But I think we can all agree that it is not an equitable food. Like, sure, it’s rich people food or whatever, but more importantly, it’s a food that discriminates. Those who were raised with lobster have an unfair advantage in deconstructing the lobster and accessing all of its tasty little mysteries. Those who were not will bleed before getting a taste. Lobster is the systemic corporate inequity of foods. What a jerk.
One Place: Literally anywhere that is not your workplace. This looks nice, huh?
One Tool: Grammarly
Turn off the AI because it’s garbage, but Grammarly is a beautiful little plug-in that makes editing as you go much easier. They’re one of the many companies overcommitting to AI to justify the ludicrous global investment, but it’s an excellent tool for reducing passive voice, proper comma usage, and verb tenses — easy mistakes to make when you’ve fully succumbed to cube monkeyitis. (It’s also pro-Oxford comma, Brandon Boyd.)
Grammarly did not pay me for this. Honestly, I should be paying you for reading this far.