Joanne Michiuye

It’s refreshing to read actual, legitimate GOOD news for a change! I forgot what that felt like!

Enjoying sitting at a patio table with coffee and a book while waiting for the car’s annual maintenance to be done—I always need an excuse for a simple outing like this or else I feel guilty.

Yellow

I saw a wild peacock in Pasadena today because I opted to take multiple right turns instead of an unprotected left.

10

This is horrific—I’m so sorry.

Wrote 20 postcards to voters tonight to do something else besides doomscroll in my bubble and fret. I like to send the mail off with a whispered benediction; these will travel with a fervent wish for a dramatic change for the better.

So far this is just a hunch, but I think I could speak French fairly credibly if I was pretty soused. I don’t know if I’d get the conjugations right but I bet I could nail the pronunciation (which has eluded me so far in my self-conscious sober state).

How did I never know how crazy counting is in French?! Sixty-eleven? Four-twenties-one?! I thought the pronunciation was going to kill me but arithmetic coupled with translating might be my ultimate undoing.

To get started on the big projects you’ve been putting off, take on new bigger projects. Or if people you know are actively wrangling their monsters, offer to help out! I’ve sorted my mess of paper files and my knitting projects and patterns are 80% organized! (Don’t ask about what I’m avoiding.)

My tradition is to say “Happy New Year” in every email in January but this year has broken me.

There’s a Spotify ad for Doritos where the phrase “grabbing a bag” sounds instead like “crab in a bag,” and yes, a crab in a bag of Doritos will definitely enliven your hangout with friends.

There’s a billboard for Cracker Barrel that has boldly emblazoned on it, “it’s all gravy”—we tried out a few different line readings; sheer panic wins by a hair above defeat and despair.

I don’t miss Twitter but occasionally I’ll dimly remember a particularly good thread, like the one about a delivery of crickets gone awry, and I’ll feel briefly wistful.

Saw a comment yesterday where someone mentioned Michael Ball posts on TikTok renditions of songs to different tunes, e.g., Empty Chairs at Empty Tables to the tune of the Muppet Show theme, and I was disbelieving, but it exists, it’s glorious, and it’s my earworm for today.

boom comics wanted to re-issue the puppycat comics and have me make more. my condition was for them to go back and retroactively pay the previous artists fair rates as their original rates were very low and shitty. they agreed to something and eventually i found out it was gonna be low residuals.

Quicksand, chloroform, and the Bermuda Triangle—as an adult, I’m relieved not to have to worry about these at all, even though I spent a lot of time fretting about them as a child in the ‘80s

The problem is I can’t tell the parody Cabinet picks from the real ones. (Don’t tell me that none of these have been parody picks.)

When i was taking Abnormal Psych in college, as is the norm, I self-diagnosed myself with every disorder as it came up in the course. Just remembered this today as I was scrolling through various memes and posts about neurodivergence, ADHD, anxiety, narcissism….

All those books about the declines and falls of empires that I never read.... do they cover how dumb things were? I was unprepared for how dumb things were going to get.

“you unfollow ppl over politics?” I have unfollowed people for preferring Andrew Lloyd Webber over Sondheim.

And I have discovered I misgendered Bluey—now I know one thing about her!

Unfortunately evergreen

Fink hearing “Everybody Loves Louis” playing in the car but hearing it as “Everybody Loves Bluey”—I’d write this parody song but I know nothing about Bluey except I think everybody does love him