5.15.2026 - Weekly Digest
Rare Monday Weekly Digest post - let's say I'm curious about metrics and comparing open/read rates correlated with day of posting and that I didn't write and edit all of this and just forget to send it on Friday.
-JA
M 5.11
In this one an attractive nurse invites me to a fundraiser gala for an org that snatches folks off the streets and trains them to be chefs. Heroin enthusiasts, bagpersons, Shouty Phil, squads of teenage internet addicts who got lost when they wandered out of their bedrooms. Each one is issued a toque and white tunic and taught proper paring technique. In the magical future when waste and poverty and scarcity are eliminated all remaining conflict will come down to nations of competing chefs trying to out-hors d'ouevres their enemies. Serving trays held aloft like banners. Canapes launched over barricades. This is what I’m on about when Nancy Pelosi spills her cosmo on my shoe.
T 5.12
The worst song I ever heard was at a megachurch in Indiana. This gal I knew, raised Italian Catholic, she converted to whatever born again faith this airplane hangar of a church was associated with. She used her spiderlike powers of seduction and entrapment to snare unsuspecting young gentlemen into joining the faith. I don't know if she got a cut but she was a public school teacher so it's hard to blame her for having a side hustle. She converted at least a few of these poor bastards then dropped them once they were firmly anointed in His blood or however it works, then she ended up marrying the son of their pastor, a blind guy who spoke in psalms and shuffled around waiting for White Jesus to jump down off the plastic cross and restore his sight, and during the ceremony where those of us from Chicago were treated like survivors of some unfathomable conflict or possibly invaders come to force abortions on everyone, the groom, in the middle of the vows, gestures over to the band (oh yeah there was a band at the end of the altar, three pieces I think, a bass, keys, bongos, playing an endless ambient major key spiritual groove) this fucking guy has the gallstones to gesture to them and say into the mic, now Gina doesn't know I'm going to do this, and no wonder because as far removed from reality as she was then I'd still like to think she would have said My Future Husband in Christ Don't You Dare Do This, and the keyboardist spins up some chords and he starts singing into the microphone and I swear to you some of these ramrod rural Christians were swaying back and forth like it was the coolest concert they'd ever attended and maybe it was, and he starts singing some ridiculous song and I was already almost blind like his dad from holy hilarity when they hit that F and he belted out You and Me and Jesus Make a Pretty Good Pair and I'm not sure but I think I ruptured at least one internal organ trying not to laugh out loud.
W 5.13
What's the word for a partnership with only one partner? A soloship? Since I made the commitment to do no research, to not even look up words while I'm writing these I've come to terms with how thoroughly ignorant I am and also how creative I can be at weaseling out of a tense situation when I'm under pressure, which I think is going to be the focus of my soloship, JAckles Individual Purveyances, a futuristic human-assisted initiative to encourage and expand the influence of bullshitters everywhere. Hit me up if you want to invest.
Th 5.14
The winner of the plant naming contest goes to the first (and only but who's counting) entrant: LEE VINING or sometimes Leroy. (thanks to Sara A age ____ in San Francisco, California!) The king. The undisputed champion of my windowsill. And because it's the end of a particularly annoying week I'm going to go full slop and leave you with a Wikipedia entry. You're welcome.
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