REID #102

Sep 13, 2022

SHORT:

I hope the rest of this week is fun!

You know, FUN? The thing girls just wanna have?

Girls and Reid just wanna have fun!!

I love how “girls just wanna have fun” sounds like an amazing song and “men just wanna have fun” sounds like a serial killer anthem. Semiotics and referents are SO interesting.

When I was in middle school band, I got the keyboard solo on a Cyndi Lauper song and thought I was cooler than god.

MEDIUM:

There’s a guy who works security for this building near a courtyard where I sometimes sit and eat my Starbucks oatmeal at 8am.

I’ve seen him, twice now, like clockwork, throw bread crumbs in the middle of the courtyard, prompting dozens of pigeons to swarm the place.

When the pigeons are nearly done eating, he chucks an orange cone at them and they fly off.

He then goes back to his guarding.

I love that his morning routine consists of that and mine consists of scrolling on TikTok until I want to die, doing the NYT Wordle, peeling myself out of bed, and then showering while thinking about “if the joke I’ve been doing onstage since 2018 that works 99% of the time actually works or has everyone and their mother been lying to me just to be nice?”

I wonder if that security guard feels cooler than god or like god doing that thing with the bread and the cone.

Ultimately, at the end of the day, that’s what god’s doing, right? Throwin’ bread and cones at us?

Sidenote — authority figures love to be so terrifying but then say things like “go forth and be awesome”.

I bet god is like killin’ people and then telling some angel in heaven to “be himself cuz the rest r taken!”

Or whatever.

I don’t actually think I believe in god, but that’s for another newsletter.

LONG:

Right after I saw the guy do the thing with the bread and the cone, I saw someone walking down the street in a t-shirt that said “Happiness is a Seagull with a French Fry” (the tee had a subsequent visual example of such happiness aka a cartoon gull with a fry).

I almost said “so true” when I walked by, but then I got in my head about whether seagulls are actually happy eating fries or just sort of are like “oh, okay, sustenance… sure, this’ll do”.

We can’t really know… unless we study their brains while they eat the fries, right?

But maybe the t-shirt designer did that…

I doubt it…

Either way, it was a fabulous piece of fashion.

I’m being stupid because it’s 11:11 and I’ve been up since 7am and I have to teach tomorrow — phenomenal!

Last class, one of my students said: “I’m inspired by things that I love, and I love things that inspire me.” And I loved it. lol; THUS!?, It inspired me!

Reply to this newsletter with what you love/and or what inspires you.

For me right now, it’s Jürgen From The Great British Bake Off (just started watching and can’t stop). If everyone was like Jürgen, there would be no war and no pain.

Also, I didn’t want to wait until now to do my newsletter but there’s a new person in our grad cohort and we had welcome drinks for him and even though I was really tired and didn’t want to go, I went because I didn’t want to not go and have it seem like some sort of a political statement.

Sometimes not going to something bc ur tired can be so political even tho u don’t mean it to b so!

I love everyone, I was just tired!

Okay peace out and rock on.

WAIT also…

I didn’t even get to watch the Emmys 2nite. But I saw that Seth Rogen, Andrew Garfield, and the tall cousin from Succession all wore Hillary Clinton esque white pantsuits. Huge win for H-Rod and feminists across the globe.

ALSO

I made a dumb twitter account with my friend where we write fake play blurbs. Follow it if u want!

OKAY now I’m done.

C u next Tuesday.