Extra Evil - Everything, Timing is
Extra Evil - Everything, Timing is
Today’s Fortune: Get ready for first contact.
Newsreel
Clarence Thomas gets to sleep inside this week.
Twitter’s zombie shambles on.
Japan’s hot new export? Nuclear waste.
America celebrated an alternate universe.
We had the hottest day in history, until Friday.
Supermassive black holes were actually super-supermassive black holes.
Today's Mood
War Journal
A bunch of you are new! Rock on. To summarize the game here: I write funny, most notably this book. I send general updates every Wednesday, free satire when I can, and paid nonfiction when it’s done. They’re labeled Extra Evil, Exclusive Evil, and Expensive Evil, respectively. Sadly, my next idea breaks the pattern.
How would I waste a time machine? Making every online dating joke first. The topic’s absurd, universal, ever-shifting, and untouchable. That’s a mental hangnail. I’m trapped in one of those Oulipo books without verbs. That joke’s impossibly niche today, but it’ll be open mic level in a week.
Praise the supernatural patience of self-checkout cashiers.
If you coin a quality phrase, avoid Mötley Crüe crimes. For decency, sure, but also my sake. I love the name “All Gas, No Brakes.” It’s rapid, evocative, and intuitive. It describes half of life after the cotton gin. I haven’t produced a better turn of phrase in my career. But the creator’s a YouTube apology, and the walls in Brooklyn have ears. I’ll end up spamming it anyway, but it’ll ruin at least one afternoon.
That’s melodramatic. My real problem is loving the phrase Wrestling Isn’t Wrestling. The director behind that went straight from an amusing video essay to running a sex cult. It was like a speedrun. I barely had time to blink. All gas, no brakes.
Thanks for supporting the summer typing spree. It’s been all gas, no sleep.
Substack’s experiments run the gamut from inexplicable to brilliant. I’m giving referral rewards a try, since they seem sane and intuitive. Though the ability to center text would be saner and more intuitive. One step at a time.
Find two Extra Evil recruits for a free month, four for two secret articles, and eight for a Mystery Box. What intact soul can resist a Mystery Box? It could be anything. Even another Mystery Box.
The Present
Is the spark gone? Rekindle your love of Uncle Sam.
Clarence Thomas is my favorite human, aside from everyone else.
An Expensive Evil about comebacks, in and out of the ring.
Apologia is a fake agency with real solutions.
Everything Abridged lets you change the past.
The Past
I wrote this the last time the Supreme Court kicked dirt on us.
The Future
Most of my obligations are finally in inboxes, so I can experiment a bit. Keep an eye out for some new ideas.
I’m making a newsletter guest appearance soon. Hopefully I don’t scare stable audiences away.
You’ll hear my voice again soon. Rejoice/weep. It’s still an unnatural marriage of GRE words, weeb slang, Burger-filtered patois, and profanity.
One Sentence Reviews
Zeiram 1: Is “lovable” an odd term for body horror? (4/5)
Fleishmann is in Trouble (Book): Won me over. (4.5/5)
Rambo: First Blood II: “Do we get to win this time?” is still a double-take quote. (Bullets/5)
Independence Day: “Welcome to Earf” is still a triple-take quote. (3.5/5)
Open Question
Signing off
Thanks for reading Extra Evil, the newsletter due for a correction. Share it to change industries.
-DD
Most useless Substack thing so far is chat. Everyone created a thread the first week, no bites (why wouldn't we just chat in the comments like usual?) and it sits there, popping up a little alert dot to trick me into checking on the ghost town. I wish platforms would stick to what they're good at instead of trying to multiclass all other platforms. We don't want a town square so much as a sequence of special clubs (or at least I do).
"The ability to center text," had me spitting out my morning tea! YES!