So a big thank you to Cameron's World and all of the Geocities sites it's assembled from, and to Neocities
for prodiving a free place to host whatever ridiculous, fantastic
websites people can come up with. If you want to give it a go (please do, so I can add more newsletters and websites to the section below, and read about all the cool stuff you've been up to) check out W3Schools.
Other Local Newsletters
I have two friends currently making newsletters:
Please start your own newsletter immediately so I can expand this section and have more stuff to read. Don't know any of the people above? Read their newsletter anyway, it'll be funny.
Looking Up
I actually don't know what's been going on in space recently, oops! It's kind of a hard thing to keep up with, given that I'm at the bottom of a gravity well and don't have any rockets handy.
I did say in the first issue that I'd probably do "Looking Down" at some point, so I'm super glad I set that up for myself. Today we're only going to be half looking down, but not really at all, and instead we're going to be looking horizontal. Last time I mentioned I was reading Richard Power's The Overstory, which is all about trees, and whilst occasionally verging on purple prose, very much convinces you that if anything is worthy of flowery writing, it's trees. So I'm totally tree-pilled now.
went out with my sister to sketch trees and acted as if it was going to be some epic new daily practice. anyway so we've done it once
these three are cute
i'm stumped
was stoned at this point so it got away from me
maybe there ARE cathedrals everywhere for those with the eyes to see...
x
caTREEdrals???
Skeleton of the Season
This summer solstice we've got this epic angry skeleton from 2002, which matches the old web TCR#3 vibe quite well. Also, though, late May and June have been host to a thunderous crisis of faith in the niceness of the world. Sweeping popcorn off of carpet after the second box-office-smash live action remake of the year and then going to chill in the local park and finding it ALSO full of litter is not too fun. Yeah, first world problems, whatever, but also the "not my problem", "look after yourself above everyone else at all times" attitude that most of society seems to have settled into is probably going to get us all killed and then we'll ALL be the evil skeleton. What then, huh?!?
Anyway that's the face I make when someone comes out of "How To Train Your Dragon" 2025 and tells me the screen in our 90-year-old tin-roof no-aircon building is "too hot" to sit down in and watch slop, whilst I've spent hours running around in it to serve them their ice cream sundaes and chilled Italian lagers.
xheard this rhetoric a lot recently and it's getting very grating. someone at work told me i should go in for a promotion and i said, nah, friend who's been here two years(!!!) longer than me wants it so i'm gonna hold off for him. and they said, fuck him, you've got to look out for yourself! well, lovely to hear how they think you should treat friends. obviously there are definitely a lot of scenarios where you should put yourself first, but also I think that being kind to people is good, actually. a customer reported me to my manager for not taking their "absolutely stone cold" (at MINIMUM lukewarm, i know what these people are like) squid back to the kitchen. anyway my reasoning for not doing so is because i was carrying a tray of TEAS AND COFFEES when they asked! so they were just willing to put me in the firing line for some random bullshit because they absolutely NEEDED to eat some hot squid (by the way, very intelligent animal and at vegan nuremberg this customer WILL be [redacted]) whilst they watch the salt path. honestly please fuck off. like i apologised profusely and they just spat back "i'm reporting you". and yes i'm still mad about it and YES pretty much this one person has made me put the angry skeleton as skeleton of the season. but also customer service is just full of people with absolutely zero compassion, as is much of the rest of the world, apparently. it's all very tiring.
I CAN BE POSITIVE I SWEAR!
I started writing this one in May, so the intro's all cheery, and then the temperature gets above 25 degrees and all of a sudden it's misanthrope central. But actually nice things have been happening too!
In early June I had five days in a row off work, so of course I used the time to go and visit Bron in Barry. As usual I was travelling by coach (the 5.15pm coach to be exact) from Victoria Coach Station, and I arrived, meal deal and pack of bourbon biscuits in hand, to a logistical disaster. Half the group was already out at the coach, with the other half still coralled in the bay. I ask another traveller what's going on, and she explains: the driver was boarding people bound for Newport first, and then travellers to Cardiff second. It doesn't take a genius to realise that this is an AWFUL idea, because the Newport people will all sit in the window seats, and then the Cardiff people, who get off later, will box them in sitting in the aisle seats. So it was already a disaster.
For some reason I wasn't privvy to, the couple who'd been first to board had been accused of queue jumping by the driver, and were basically pleading to be let on board, because one of them had a medical condition that required the two of them to sit together. The driver calmly explained that he wasn't refusing to let them on, and then went back to totally ignoring them, which to me was kind of like he was refusing to let them on, but whadda I know.
Anyway. I get on the coach. I walk the entire length of the coach. There are no seats left at all. They've FUCKED IT.
CHAOS REIGNS in Victoria Coach Station. A few people are just going feral on the driver for not letting the couple on, who are quite distressed at this point. He actually does end up just being very rude to all of us and demanding that we sit down, so fuck that guy. In the end I stay behind for the 6pm coach, along with the woman who told me about his dipshit plan and her friend, who immediately nickname me "Bourbon" and buy me a coffee and we just have a nice chat in the coffee shop until the next coach. They're both in HR, and didn't want to be on a coach driven by the 5pm coach guy who they got BAD VIBES from. I found out they'd just been to London for a tour of a popular self-help writer who... who... who WROTE A BOOK ABOUT HOW WE SHOULD JUST CARE ABOUT OURSELVES AND SHOULDN'T HELP OTHER PEOPLE??? NO! NOOOO!!! NOOOOOOOOO!!!!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
Okay the book is actually about only caring about what's within your control or whatever. Like if your boyfriend wants to go to Paris to pursue a career as a chef you should probably just break up with him and let him, right? Like that's totally fair. But I'm still looking at "The Let Them Theory" suspiciously, just a teensy little bit. Anyway, whilst we're waiting around for the next one, professional National Express apologist comes over and BOOM. Full refund, free journey on the 6pm, vouchers for our next coach trips. Even better, turns out the two HR ladies they're going to Penarth and Sully after they get to Cardiff, and offer to give me a lift to nearby Barry. We're so fucking back. Faith in humanity RESTORED. Bless up. I'll see you all on Sunday, at CHURCH.
Then, whilst we're going over the Severn Bridge, I have a premonition of the bridge collapsing due to high winds, killing everyone except for my ex-girlfriend Molly Harper. I panic and convince Molly, my friend and boss Peter Friedkin, Peter's girlfriend Candice Hooper, my manager Dennis Lapman, factory manager Nathan Sears and... and... okay, no, sorry, that's Final Destination 5. But I'm pretty sure all of that would have happened if I'd have got on the 5.15pm coach. No joke, a few nights ago youtube recommended me this.
Anyway. I get my g-damn lift to Barry. Life's good. Me and Bron hang out and go swimming and get high. It's sick. We go and see the new Final Destination movie. Hell yeah.
YEEEAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!
xyes, he probably is writing his own journal with a picture of a skeleton to represent how pissed off all of his passengers make him.
xwatched all these movies, starting with the new one bloodlines, and finishing off with 5 the night before my coach to Wales. very funny to watch the coach-goes-over-a-big-bridge-and-it-collapses-and-everyone-dies movie just before i get on a coach that goes over a bid bridge. also the movies are great fun. watched bloodlines a second time with Bron. literally the exact same formula every time, but it's clearly the perfect movie formula because they all rule. also the bit about becoming a parisian chef is also in 5 if you were still confused.
and finally...
Album of the Season
THAT'S RIGHT! It's Caroline Polachek's Desire, I Want to Turn Into You. The fourth track on the album, Sunset, is just an instant summer classic.
The last few months I've been pulling albums out of dad's old collection in the attic, and picking some up at charity shops. Here's some stuff I've been spinning:
PEAK attic find. I'd never heard this one before, apart from Walk of Life. Great album.
PEAK charity shop find. Live-recorded blues. Instantly one of the best records I have.
Got baited in by the album cover, had a listen online, read some reviews. Very glad I grabbed this one (for a very reasonable £4!), cool heavy blues rock.
Pierre Dutour's TOP FICTION appeared to me at Flashback Records Crouch End. I've been a long time devotee to the track "Deer Forest" a youtube algorithm classic.
Spacey synth alongside a pastoral title so that always makes me think of Silent Running. Belongs as the theme to a 70s star wars ripoff. Anyway, most of the rest of the tracks aren't on spotify, which makes it a PRIME record to own. WRONG! That's because the rest of it sucks. Even the release notes from the record label say to skip the first track. Why did I buy this.
x
luckily quite a few of the other tracks ARE as good as deer forest, so I don't feel too burned.
also, these notes reference an album that's fantastic start to finish, Brian Bennet's Voyage. it would be wrong, since it's the titular the day, not to mention the track Solstice
Goodbye for now!
Phew am I glad I didn't get on that 5.15pm coach! Wouldn't it have sucked if I'd have been there and caused the whole bridge to collapse or whatever? Even better, Final Destination is just a movie, and death isn't actually after me!
Oh! There's my pack of bourbon biscuits. And there's one left! Don't mind if I do...
Gahk. Ughuh. I'm... *splutter* choking to death on my last bourbon! This really... takes the biscuit...
author of my GOATed passage of all time. i recently visited waterstones and flicked through a physical copy of Ready Player Two (because of course these words are my fictional mecca) and found that the infamous 'non-binary sex' (pictured above) had been rephrased as 'pansexual sex recorded by people who were all over the gender spectrum'. shocking historical revisionism.
