Sharpening All the Pencils in the House

Back to School, Trench Foot, Blackberry-Plum Breakfast Bars

Oh nothing, I’m just sitting here, writing this Substack post on the last day of summer, marinating in end-of-summer-scaries, and channeling Baby Sam Bee, perpetually terrified by all things back-to-school. 

The Catholic School overachiever in me spent the better part of the day, yes, sharpening all the pencils in the house? And remembering too much time spent worrying about back to school outfits, which I definitely never got right. 

Plus in Canada, in the 1970s, if your parents were as cost conscious as mine were, they would proudly march you right past the store selling the Nike’s with the cool rubber toe cap, and directly into the BiWay for your brand new pair of blazing white Sparx. All that was left to do was pray to Jesus the whole way to forgive you for hating them so much.

Also today, I’m thinking about all the emails left unanswered.

Being on double strike.

And all the organizational projects that fully vaporized. Such as: my garage, which is now less a garage per se, and more of a catch basin for the remnants of a canceled television show. Anybody need a spare eight foot tall, four foot wide VO booth? No? OK.

This summer has brought brutal fires, numerous presidential indictments, continuing attacks on trans rights and bodily autonomy. We have been enchanted by menopausal killer whales taking out their mood swings on unsuspecting sailboats, elderly senators, and dolls.

I have felt the mockery of my children for taking them to see Oppenheimer on Barbie opening weekend, been stung by various wasps THREE FULL TIMES, and witnessed grown women run sobbing out of Taylor Swift themed exercise classes.

As a small treat, Mother Nature blessed us with Burning Man 2023–NOT funny for a lot of very nice, normal, art loving event goers–but an EXCEEDINGLY FUNNY opportunity to observe what happens when you take a bunch of rich, libertarian-leaning, RFK Jr. curious tech bros and plop them in the muck. Folks, MANY sexy desert plans were dashed, and some brave gents had to hike *six whole miles with wet feet* so that they could later probably tell us all about how they discovered trench foot. Look, they never bothered to read up on World War One. It happened before they were even born, and so in that sense, did it really happen at all? 

The point is–there are SO many people whom I wish would try to make lives for themselves out there in the desert. Come on fellas! Put all those esoteric (bad) ideas you have about humanity to good use and build a new society built solely of digital wood from your NFTs.

Remember Steve Bannon’s biosphere? That went great. Don’t let them anywhere near THIS ARTICLE about that whole thing. 

This is your periodic reminder that we should all please stop acting like very rich or influential people automatically possess additional intelligence or wisdom.

Managing a for-profit business doesn’t give anyone a special inside track on managing an economically, ethnically, politically diverse country teetering on the brink of fascism. 

This is why Vivek Ramaswamy needs to go away forever, and he should take RFK Jr. with him.

I worked a lot this summer, on a bunch of stuff that I hope you like, including a nine episode narrative podcast coming in the fall with journalist Gloria Riviera. It’s about the people on the ground working their asses off, yes, defending people’s access to abortion. It’s going to be great and I can’t wait to share it.

Meantime, here’s a roundup up of some very cool podcasting I have done this summer, with a nice fresh episode featuring Alyssa Mastromonaco.

PLUS a reminder that tickets are now on sale for my fall tour, Your Favorite Woman: The Joy of Sex Education.

Lastly, on this Labor Day, I cleaned out my fridge and made blackberry-plum breakfast bars. 

I am a very good baker, but the more homespun things I make, the more my children want goods packaged in a factory like, a year ago. As in “YAY breakfast bars! These are fine, but can we get some at COSTCO???” Here’s a photo. Would you even want to know how to make these?

Until next week.

Love,

Me