Extra Evil - Titanic Dance Party
Today's Fortune: Tip your fortune teller.
Newsreel
Direct action against inconvenient presidents is on the table.
You might die for Greenland.
The UAE and Saudis pointed at Spider-Man.
Doctors Without Borders can't cross Gaza's border.
US brands sold like tumors.
Keeper brings the glory of AI to the paradise of online dating.
You Need This
I get to hang closer to reality every round.
A Photo
War Journal
First, the prosaic. I'll reintroduce Extra Evil for new readers, and people opening this for the first time in three years. To the latter: holy hell, wild ride right? Difficult on the practical and moral fronts, but the fake sugar's improved. Baby steps into the future.
Posts labeled Extra Evil are weekly catch-ups. Typically news riffs, personal notes, new writing by me, babble about advertising, and a podcast I should give it's own day of the week. If you're mostly here to stalk me, this is your jam.
Exclusive Evil is a catch-all category for bonus articles, satirical stunts, and occasional fiction. The metrics robot says these are your favorite.
Expensive Evil is the jewel in our bonnet, and holds increasingly ambitious longform nonfiction. So ambitious, I forgot to do one in 2025. I'll engage in some reform on that front. Perhaps with less ambition, and more "existing." Which is a nice lesson for life in general.
I'm going to try a few new ideas this lap around the sun. Treat the failures kindly, I'm biased in favor of big swings. Or don't, I'm thick-skinned. Princeton's not a tutorial in human warmth and mercy.
No Other Choice hit some theaters in 2025, and others in 2026. Making it unclear if it's my movie for 2025 or 2026. I'll just say the latter, to give Blues-flavored vampire hunts have their due. Sinners put a smile on my face with each fresh corpse.
The White House Cyclone outlines American flaws in caricature. Like a funhouse mirror, if funhouses bombed other parks at random. Do any carnivals do that? The Jersey State fair lacks that feature, but maybe there used to be two.
You don't have to dig deep if you're an uptown New Yorker, klan adjacent, fond of stimulants, or enjoy plastic surgery for its own sake. My perch makes denial easier. In fact, I enjoy a warm, cozy hot tub of denial. Where I dodged, until the newsletter deadline tapped my forehead, a simple question: what part of me is reflected here? What's my view of the funhouse mirror? I didn't have to think long.
The revenge.
Not that I'm a frequent flyer. Blood oaths are the first habit I pushed into my personal gulag. But I hear the impulse, and loudly. Spec-fic speeches about vengeance being hollow feel less stock, more slice-of-life. Perhaps that's why my tolerance for game plots is as high as it is.
Now, when I learn our coup's main beneficiary changed because the opposition leader won the Nobel Donald lusted after like a kickball champion, I don't feel national shame. I don't feel historic shame. I feel personal shame, as a petty fuck. The this is you hits in a way that the flag-waving and bible-bothering never quite reach.
If there's any good from the swastikas carved into the Resolute Desk, it's that I'm even less likely to indulge a grudge now. I don't want to be from Eagleland, let alone resemble the leadership. Granted, that's because of a grudge. We all progress our own way.
Unrelatedly, I imagine its tough times for toupee manufacturers.
I enjoy the word market. The value of individual terms fluctuates rapidly--faster than all but the most hardcore traders can track. Look what happened to "normalize" this year. "Epic" is just starting to recover from a crash twenty years ago. Who knows what 2026's first winners and losers will be?
A Screenshot
The Present
- I endorse every viewpoint in this book. [How to Dodge a Cannonball]
- You'd think we'd have cracked Ice-9 by now. [Exclusive Evil]
- My favorite Confederate nutcase returns. [1900HOTDOG]
- Amran and I talk punchlines. [Hopeton Hay Podcasts]
- Noah may not make it past his next holiday. [You Need This]
- I endorse every fact in this book. [Everything Abridged]
The Past
The Future
A cut segment from something I just pitched:
Hammers moved quickly lately—a solid omen. Supplier prices rose as well—less solid. I had a notification from Annabelle. That reeked of disaster.
And a gym equipment supplier in Newark had a going out of business sale—blaming tariffs, instead of their own lack of drive. Normally, I avoided rewarding such weakness. But prices elsewhere looked murderous. I jumped on the deal.
Dead Sun Theory
Soon.
Not Brought to You By
Our "ads seen in passing" theme continues. It's a decent sign that I still emerge from the Typing Cave long enough to catch them. Though that says more for my flip tricks than overall sanity.
Subway ads stay up forever, so this bit of Thanksgiving dogvertising is still around:
At least, that's the overhead view. Below, there's the testimonial:
There's not much here. It almost doesn't exist. Admittedly, most ads would stop at pinning "Thankful for" to a dog photo. And if testimonials get a weaker eye roll anywhere, it's in the pets/babies/organ donation circuit. Nothing inspires low effort like high sympathy.
That said, "Lola, Paola's Person" sticks out. That kind of hypersentimental, postthought nonsense...has a place. At least, with the target strain of pet servant. It's on the right side of the line "Join the pack" is on the wrong side of.
Creativity: D | Persuasion: D+ | Sanity: C
One Sentence Reviews
Welcome to the Monkey House: I live in envy. (5/5)
Thunderbolt Fantasy IV, First Half: Still inexplicable gold. (4.5/5)
Ninja Gaiden IV, First Half: Flagellating myself in Itagaki's memory. (4/5)
A Question
Signing off
Thanks for reading Extra Evil, the newsletter without a plan. Share it to improvise.
