REID #100

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SHORT:

Here it is! The 100th newsletter! Can you believe it?

According to the robots who run the internet, my most popular newsletters have been:

#66.5 (never forget), #1, #33, #90, #87, #96, & #97

You should probably re-read those instead of this one.

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MEDIUM:

I avoided writing this all day because I didn’t know “how to make it special”.

Ultimately, I suppose, nothing is special and everything is special.

^ I’m always saying things like this in this newsletter; flattening concepts into worthlessness, but then also demanding that even the smallest flake of granola has monstrous meaning :)

Somehow, in my late teens, I went from being a little wh*re for Tom Daley & Adam Lambert to being a total harlot for the general concept of “paradox” (and have doubled down on latter as I’ve moved into my early and mid 20’s).

Kinda cool. Kinda annoying.

^gonna get those phrases tattooed above my right knee and left knee respectively.

Instead of writing, I vacuumed my entire apartment.

I did it barefoot, and midway through, I vacuumed up my toe… and then loudly overreacted to the toe-vac… which triggered the dog next door to bark… which prompted its owners to yell at it… which made me think about how little things… like vacuuming up your toe on accident… can make change. Can make ~an impact~.

Whenever I use the word “impact” I think about my high school teacher who HATED when people used the word “impacted” to mean “had an effect on”.

She was always like, “YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO USE THAT WORD WHEN REFERRING TO TEETH! NOT ABOUT HOW HUCKLEBERRY FINN MADE YOU FEEL!”

I hope she’s retired on an island somewhere.

If she saw the way I conduct myself grammatically in this newsletter, she’d drop dead.

But I’d also like to remind everyone that the way I write this thing actually isn’t sloppy or dumb it’s actually radical act of queering tagmemics/syntax/linguistics).

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LONG:

After vacuuming, I called my gay senior citizen pen pal and he didn’t pick up…

I (once again) hope to god he just… fell asleep early. And that it’s a normal sleep and not The Big One.

Or that he’s at another “Italian Dinner That Ran Long”.

The other night he told me that “he has a face for radio” and hates that he is being filmed for his 2 different acting classes that he takes and I assured him he had a stunning countenance.

It was a nice conversation, but I don’t want those to be our last words.

Speaking of Italian… as of today, the lupini bean company I used to work for full-time making memes that say “we’re not NY based or LA based… we’re plant-based” (and now work for part-time making the same memes but only on Tuesdays) has started selling bean-based pasta.

This is huge.

They went from just selling lupini-bean-based bars to selling lupini-bean-based bars AS WELL AS lupini-bean-based pasta.

Not many people can say that they’ve done that.

But the bean company I work for can.

As we move into Fall, how will you spiritually move from “only selling lupini-bean-based bars to selling lupini-bean-based bars AS WELL AS lupini-bean-based pasta?”

What’s your version of that?

Comment below.

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And now, to wrap up the big REID newsletter # hundo edition, HERE are the submissions that I’ve chosen from my lovely readers who sent in “reason(s) they get up in the morning”.

*trumpet sound*

REASONS I GET UP IN THE MORNING — BY REID POPE’S NEWSLETTER SUBSCRIBERS (IN HONOR OF THE BIG HUNDO):

#1 - to pee

#2 - to try to get a Winner egg and cheese on an english muffin but i’m never early enough

#3 - because my back starts hurting (and i can no longer be horizontal and then i get up and vertical doesn’t feel that much better but it feels a little better so i have to settle for that)

#4 - to do the new york times spelling bee (guess frikken who submitted this one)

#5 - to walk my dog

#7 - because i love life

#8 - to read ur newsletter (get outta here! it only comes out once a week)

#9 - “You have to keep living; live to change the prejudices by which this man has been made one of the countless victims. ... you must restore the honor of this man and bring justice to him, and all those who came before him, and all those to come after him. Justice through knowledge!” - Magnus Hirschfeld in Anders als die Andern (1919)

#10 - because there is somewhere i need to go be hot 

#11 - because i raised 2 gay kids

#12 - because ppl like me and i like people and want to show them that and have them feel it

#13 - this isn’t a reason, but I would like to seal the 100th newsletter with a little kiss, you can opt in or out of including that detail

#14 - to go to school

#15 - to go to work

#16 - because i can

#17 - because i deserve it

#18 - because Adam Lambert lost to Kris Allen on American Idol and I haven’t been able to sleep since

And that’s it!

Thank you all for an amazing hundred REIDs. I started this newsletter in the middle of lockdown when I was stuck in a cheese-cube-sized room with tits and a different name doing zero writing and I thought, what if I just hold myself to writing something every week and send it out?

WELL, BABY?!

It’s been 100 weeks of something.

Here’s to 100 more.

And then 100 more after that.

And then after that, I’ll probably be too tired.

But who knows.

C U NEXT TUESDAY!

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Thank you for subscribing. If this is your first time reading the newsletter, read the archives. Sometimes it’s funny. And sometimes it’s not. It’s a lot like when someone slips and falls on ice.

Sincerely,

Reid

@rpopegram

@rpopetweets

Venmo: @rpope-venmo-26

Donate to The Audre Lorde Project

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Bonus Jonas Zone:

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