There’s no real reason to include the above
But you wouldn’t believe how much a sales and marketing manager is going to make that picture the only thing about a newsletter like this that’s ever worth spending time on or discussing. (This headline to transitional paragraph is, like, the upper limit on what a marketing exec is ever going to appreciate about a written product like this, and that’s if they somehow majored in English before getting an MBA. Or were just a big-time book boy (or girl, I just liked the alliteration) growing up but decided all the various dimensions of the human experience that were there to explore were all kinda boring, so fuck it, marketing MBA. Souls like that do exist in our word.)
It’s sad, but the world we live in today doesn’t care much for the written word. Society certainly doesn’t value it $ wise, and that’s probably because such a large percentage of the population either doesn’t read or only reads children’s books.
Oh my god, don’t let this be one of those kinda blogs. The old man can’t stand it blog. AND ANOTHER THING, THEY’RE ALL ALWAYS ON THEIR PHONES!!! Oh I’ll tell you kids what’s cancelled, this callout culture is what’s cancelled.
See? That last paragraph really served no purpose, advanced no argument, it just kind of sat there to fill space and you kinda skimmed it and raised a brow and said ‘huh, I guess he thinks he’s invoking a character here’ but you continued on, and why? Because I hooked you with a great picture, all them cats and dogs up top there. See, that picture makes or breaks whatever comes next. Problem is, there’s gotta be a “whatever comes” there. I literally just came with the picture and no other ideas. Already, I feel that I blew it. I included maybe one of the cutest photographs of all time and set the bar high.
It is true, though. Once you have written for people at the executive level who maybe are kinda actually dopes, and been asked to turn what amounted to, for example, a 2-month project to write detailed research about autonomous vehicle regulations worldwide only to be told at the end of presenting it that it should have been “mostly pictures,” you realize that what you were told in your childhood was, in fact, a lie. The idea that if you just choose whatever path you like the most, you’re gonna make it. A very boomer attitude. Hey, worked for them — the economy was still actually growing in a real way. Now it’s all just speculation on various apps and internet sites and maybe some steel production and cars or something. (Probably should refrain from making points where that’s the level of specificity I’m able to give to back them up, but whatever, you aren’t paying for this.)
For a select few of my generation—generally, those with connections and were able to gather themselves up to put them to use at the insanely young age we ask people to determine what their life’s vocation will be—doing what they love has worked. But for the most part? Nah. Student debt is crushing most people, underemployment is getting nearly everyone, and the cost of living has never been higher. Actually, it would have been better to teach us to do whatever it took to survive. The idea that this particular generation of Americans received the “do what you love” message and graduated straight into the great recession is really kind of comical if you take the REALLY long view.
I think that said more about the generation that was giving us that message than it did about what reality actually was. They’d gotten a pretty sweet ride. They got to simulate what it would be like to win a culture war without actually having to mobilize and do anything for it. Their ‘minimum wage’ was enough to rent a place (for one—imagine that!), have food, take care of all their basic needs. They pretty much could do what they loved even if it didn’t pay almost anything.
Nowadays, for someone to take a job where they’re really actually doing something that materially helps someone else, they pretty much have to sign themselves up for a life of poverty and then compete with the hundreds of thousands of others who have also resigned themselves to perpetually being broke.
But yet, somehow, we’re the problem.
When really, the problem is those damn generation Z kids, the younger millennials, Gen X, the boomers, the greatest generation, and the oldest living civil war veterans from that one ww1 parade.
Call to Action
This is the point in the marketing email where you’re, like, “hmm, well, when I opened this email I had no idea about this generational warfare but now that you mention it, I suddenly realize that hits a lot of my pain points and I need some sort of action or process i can get engaged with or else I’m going to forget I ever even had those pain points!”
So here’s my call to action. No matter your age, no matter your generation. Become a member of this newsletter subscription thing to get posts by me in your inbox. That is the disruptive, innovative solution to everything. Because we’ve already pretty much discerned that everyone is just going to go about their business while this thing collapses, let’s form little communities around even the most vague of connections.
Like this list, for example. You number in the double digits. Most of you, to my knowledge, do not know one another. There is absolutely no reason all of you would cross paths with all others receiving this message. That’s… kind of cool, I guess?
So the action you have been called to is to tell 3 friends and extract a promise* from them that they will tell 3 friends and extract that same promise from each of them. Soon we shall be an army.
*and I mean seriously extract the promise. Using any means necessary. Any.
Also, if people won’t accept boomers as the source of all our problems, switch right over to zoomers, the brats that when they were growing up, hey i’ve heard of having your head in the clouds, but having your head in the CLOUD? I.e. all your memories are backed up to a cloud storage space? Thank you, folks, I’ll be here all the rest of my life. Tip the waitstaff. In all seriousness, though, do blame them. Try not to think of my funny joke because you want to maintain a straight face when you’re undertaking this action you’ve been called to.
But this isn’t making much sense, and I’m not sure if this is what I signed up for...
Hey, chill. I’m giving you a voice in the headers. Just relax, let me address it, jeez.
First of all, you need to check your expectations when it comes to free content and just be glad there haven’t been 5 ads for squarespace and stamps.com by this point already.
Secondly, understand that a paleomillennial is a thing I made up before there was a netflix comedy special called “elder millennial.” But it is pretty much the same idea. I don’t understand how they set up the dates for these things. But it’s kind of weird when you’re, as a generation, lumped in with a group that had cell phones and internet in elementary school at the low end - when we didn’t have that shit til, like, senior year of HS for a lot of people, soph-junior year at best. We had land lines only, ever, and just dial-up and the incredibly limited amount of shit to do back then on the internet.
When I was 10 years old a rap song came out where the ultimate brag about wealth was made, that of ownership of both a super nintendo AND a sega genesis. That’s what I’m saying, I guess.
I don’t know. Perhaps it’s my reaction to being put in a box, maaan. You’re gonna put me in the millennial box, fine, I’m gonna add some kinda prefix to the word and pass it off as my own thing. I can’t be held down by your law! So the true fact is that the name of this publication is pretty much meaningless and represented just the best I could do at the time, and I’m sorry.
Thirdly, and maybe this should have been firstly, because it’s really the gist of this whole thing. This newsletter is basically a blog, but better. The fact that it’s coming to your inbox means I can manage how much of it stays on the web. But the fact that it’s also a newsletter inspires me to get a lil creative. I am sort of envisioning a typical ISH (“issue”) involving me popping off on politics, clapping back on culture, and reacting in the form of reviews, cordoned off into sections. That makes it a little more like a ZINE.
And look, cassette tapes are cool again, which tells me that zines are coming up REAL soon. I published a zine myself, at the tender age of 14, to run Diplomacy games and communicate with middle aged men across the world about games of Diplomacy. I know the zine game. My moment’s gonna come and folks, I am going to be ready.
This is the moment where the “who’s with me” cliche from movies happens. (I ask that of you all and the camera pulls back to reveal everyone has left and I’ve been speaking to an empty room.)
Look, I’m still not convinced, and I’m getting uncomfortable. I’m gonna go…
I mean, okay, it’s been awkward conversing with you in the middle of a blog post I’m trying to write. Kinda weird that you keep chiming in, almost like you’re trying to divide this post into discernible sections, when—as you say—this is all very awkward and uncomfortable for everyone. In fact, you’re embarrassing me. Kinda highlighting the fact that I have no control over my own document.
LOL, I’m the embarrassment? Okay, dude. Whatever you gotta tell yourself to get through the day. I’m sick of your GUFF. Peace I’m outta here. *door slams* *car starts* *tires squeal*
Ok, bye?
Look, sorry folks. The fact is I need an outlet for my silliness and this is it. If I give it some sort of high-minded purpose it’s a recipe for my not continuing to do it. If I let it just be a spot where I can write some goofy junk to a very random collection of people that have signed up, then we got somethin’.
I have been working on all sorts of fun digital things that I’ll include here as I get goin. I have very strange and brief obsessions with topics or people, and lately I’ve been cutting video clips of William F Buckley interviewing Groucho Marx on whether life is funny or not, for example. I became obsessed with Buckley recently when it dawned on me that he was pretty much the father of all the conservative bullshit we hate and was seen as a mans man by a lot of people but is so like trump, effete and just socially weird. So, when I’m going through one of these fascinations, you’re likely to get some material on that - like the clips I’ll link to in the next deal.
I also set this thing up to allow for podcasting - but I thought I would do more of a curating thing of just picking my favorite podcast moments of the last however long of a period and cutting them into a single file for my peeps. You gotta sift thru a lot of boring stuff to find the gems and I’d like to provide you that service.
Any email I get regarding this project is subject to reprint in the next ISH unless you tell me otherwise. I recognize what I have written here is mostly nonsense/filler and doesn’t invite much of a response, but send me a note at hdgfreelance@protonmail.com and tell me what’s on your mind. It can be like a super-delayed call-in show. It can be whatever ya like! Or whatever I like, that day. I am gonna try to get this out once a week, roughly, hopefully with more time having been put into it than I did with this one.
This has been issue zero, such a future deep cut in the mythos of this newsletter that you should probably go ahead and get someone to verify your copy of this email as genuine.
For real, though, folks - I am touched by the fact that you signed up sight unseen, and I’ll be even more touched if you don’t unsubscribe after this first one. Vaya con dios for now.
I’m gonna find the first banner image I can find that fits the size specs and add it below just to close ‘er out.