CRACKPOTS #73: SPRING NEWSLETTER (Patreon)

DEAR LISTENERS: I may have mentioned this in the newsletter before but once I was walking down Leavenworth street, I think I was 18 years old, and a very beautiful woman appeared next to me and slid her arm under mine and told me to keep walking. I listened to her. She said a man was following her and that I had to act like her boyfriend. I don't know what the hell she thought I was gonna do about it. But what luck! One moment my sorry ass was shuffling down the street and the next---a woman.

I couldn't believe it. She was like Lauren Bacall. She must have had a smoky voice. At any rate she does in my recollection. She asked me, in no doubt seductive tones, what I did for a living. I informed her I was employed as a male florist. This was true. This brightened her up and she asked me what sort of flower she looked like. What an interesting question! And from such a gorgeous source! But I must have been hypnotized by my marvelous luck because what I said next was baffling. I really put my foot in my mouth. I told her she reminded me of a daffodil. A daffodil! Why did I say that? She was a brunette, for God's sake! Daffodils are practically yellow weeds. She repeated "Daffodil?" and I realized what a huge mistake I'd made. What was wrong with me? Daffodil? What a goofy, ugly word. Daffodil!

In those days I was still panicked by strange women. I was humiliated. I must've blushed. But I suppose by walking with her I had engendered some goodwill. She told me her name and where she worked and that I should come by sometime. Then we were on Market street, where we parted. I stood there like an asshole, dumbfounded, and then I forgot her name and where she worked and in fact forgot all about her except the daffodil part and I made my way to my stupid DJ NIGHT (haha), the famous Sex Nite at the Beauty Bar, where I got completely drunk and took cocaine. I worked at flower shops for an endless number of years after that. I forgot about the incident with the girl but my bitterness at daffodils remained. But now I like them. Just goes to show that you never know what's going to happen. Life is always full of surprises.

All that is to say: Spring has arrived. In my neighborhood there are tulips busting out of the dirt, every few feet there's a new bunch, and they're fat headed and open to the sun. And there's daffodils, too. I like looking at them. Spring means renewal. And speaking of, wouldn't it be incredible if this newsletter was announcing the TrueAnon Spring Merch Collection? Wouldn't that just make you go berserk with joy?

Here's the NASTY TRUTH: I have no idea what’s going on with our merch situation (not saying nobody has any idea, I just don’t, LIZ does it usually!) but I had some fantastic ideas for a couple of new gambling themed designs that I’m working on. By working on I mean I gotta call my friend Judy so she can tell me what to do. I can’t design anything on the computer. The podcast merch business is a strange one. How much of it can you really make? Should it say the podcast name on it? If it doesn’t, and maybe just has some amusing phrase, am I just like those guys on Instagram who make goofy shirts that are like “I’d let the guy from gay hockey show fuck my ass”?*

THIS is why podcasts have managers. They do these things for you. I can tell you exactly what would happen. We’d get an email with a subject that says “SHIRT DESIGNS” that would contain a handful of images by a designer they contracted. That designer would likely have gotten the job by advertising his work with podcasts of a similar size. The art would look identical. One design would say CAPITALISM SUCKS and be in the style of another popular shirt. Another would have PEDOPHILE in the Metallica font (Actually that’s a great idea). Then a third would be some MEME like DARK WOKE with a picture of a LESBIAN FLAG SWASTIKA being HEILED by some clearly feminine but BUTCH HITLER—maybe she has an undercut. And then the three of us would all see it and, embarrassed and ashamed, none of us would say anything to each other. Certainly nobody would respond to the email. A week passes. The manager is forced to “BUMP” us, just FLAGGING, another humiliation which they have to repeat until one of us says “Hi, we’re not really happy with the designs…”. Whenever someone suggests we get a manager so we’re not going CRAZY all the time, I just think about that. I’d be paying some asshole to send me emails I don’t respond to. But anyways maybe some new merch at some point in the future.

It seems like listeners are, for the most part, digging the pair of solo episodes we’ve done (the trip ones don’t really count). That’s a relief. Those episodes came together quickly. The first one I threw together in a manic hurry after a guest fell through and I went crazy, scraping all my notes for that and instead just doing what it ended up being. The next one was a similar situation. I mostly did that on the plane coming back from LA. I think I was going through some kind of burned out psychosis.

Now, guest cancellations happen sometimes or things come up but if it’s just Liz and I, we can usually figure something out. This format is working relatively well for now but I'd like to experiment a bit further. We'll see what happens.

I really like doing episodes on the road. I recognize the show can’t do it that often for a variety of reasons but I’m hoping to include more of that coming up. I wanted to “do” DC but honestly, there isn’t much to actually do there. I was hoping the TPUSA "MAKE HEAVEN CROWDED" tour would hit the capitol but no such luck. The dates for that event are just amazingly difficult to make. Though rest assured I am working on something involving the difficult circumstances of Charlie Kirk's incident but it’s much more gentle than the haranguing and arguing that I’m sure happens at these events. So much conflict!

In truth I'm not in an hurry to travel. I was on eight flights in two weeks. I know that's not a ton for real plane heads but real plane heads can't hate flying as much as me. Flying that much in two weeks has driven me totally crazy. It turns me into a monster…I start to think of other people as the masses and myself apart from them, subject to their alien impulses and noises…in short, I become murderously antisocial. The snorting, farting, wheezing masses...I'll slap myself out of it. I am not different. I snort and fart and wheeze too. We are all human beings.

And because I keep that beautiful fact at the forefront of my mind, I can get along with pretty much anybody. Actually that's totally untrue. I like a great deal of people and I can stomach almost anybody for a certain amount of time. In turn, many can bear my presence if there's a firm promise of our future parting. My thing is: I love everybody. CPAC was, at times, a difficult test of my naive philosophy. I try to find the good in people I meet. I even feel bad when I say things about people that may be true and honest. I think: Oh, but we're all just human beings. Everyone is doing what they think is best. I do have a high tolerance for insane people---one must, if one is to interact with anyone even tangentially involved in politics---but it can wear a man down. I think if I still drank I would do much better. Anyways, you heard the episodes. It's all love. On that note I find it helpful to just append “But not me though” whenever I see any asshole making some grand statement on the internet. “We have given up on aesthetics, everything is so ____” blah blah blah blah. I get less annoyed when by affixing a “But not me though” onto the end because it makes the person sound playful.

Working on something about bimbofication. This might never happen but perhaps I will become bimbofied on the show. I'm in negotiations. Really I’m curious what makes a man go bimbo—the ridiculous hillock breasts and the like, the total abnegation of dignity. What an amazing world. Many of my worst fears (humiliation at the hands of a beautiful woman, being trapped in some kind of cage or prison, getting beaten or tied up) are little bits of heaven to other people. Such a wide range of emotion that whips can produce! I was spanked by a spankologist a couple of years ago and I remember thinking, when his hand was slapping my ass, that it just sucks to get spanked. Yet people pay him money! He lives off spanking fees. The world is enormous and there are many things in it.

Some of those things I like, some I love, some I can't tolerate for more than a moment. Some I even hate. Here's my Spring recommendations:

Another Day in the Life by Ryscard Kapuscnizki- Great book just finished it last night

Ultravox Ha! Ha! Ha! - Great record

Fearless Iranians from Hell Blow Up the Embassy - Great tune

The Butterfly - James M Cain - rereading this, great little book

Doing less pleasure reading as everyones book is coming out right now and I got a backlog of like five I have to read for the show.

SPRING DUDS

For some reason I saw Project Hail Mary and it was one of the worst movies I've seen in theaters. Do not under any circumstances waste your time on this crap.

LOVE BB

 * example picked here because a friend of mine was working for such a company, you may have even heard of it, and he was amazed at how many variations of funny Heated Rivalry t-shirt one company could make, and how many people were buying them, people went crazy for these things, but I've never in my life seen a man or woman walking around in a pun-based Heated Rivalry t-shirt or really a Heated Rivalry t-shirt of any kind.