The Friday Dispatch: August 8, 2025

Hello, stinkies! It is Friday. I “cleaned my desk” yesterday, which means I sorted and organized all the bins and folders under/around my desk, while leaving the actual writing/working surface a disaster-mess. Whaaaa!!! Wheeeee!!!! Yay! I am so Oscar-coded1, not in that I am Grouchy, but in that I love trash <3

Life has been mostly a lot of wins lately! Last weekend I did Zine Things with Jake and Gabe and skated with Rosa and got piña coladas with her and Jake. And then Saturday my friend Rebecca saw me get crushed like a bug, by a sweaty drunk man!

Context: Rebecca went to the Spike & The Gimme Gimmes concert with me. You perhaps know them as Me First & The Gimme Gimmes, which was their name until they rebranded due to 100% less Fat Mike. Rebecca was a true sport who did NOT know what the hell she was getting into and we had a lot of fun dancing/bopping/grooving and in between bands, standing in the center of the floor holding hands and gabbing.

Both openers were new to me! Kate Clover rocked, would see her + the band again, very eager to binge all the music videos which seem as thoughtful and fun as the songs themselves:

The Schizophonics were VERY fun to watch, and VERY fun to listen to, and I TRULY have no idea what I saw. Allegedly—allegedly!—the frontman Pat Beers is really for real 100% playing the guitar one-handed while he catapults all around the stage. I was there in real life and I am NOT sure if I believe that AT ALL. I don’t necessarily care; if the guitar/bass are pre-recorded and this is all a sort of drag show, it is in service to Lety Beers, the drummer, married to Pat. She is PHENOMENAL and a joy to watch and I think more bands should be a talented lady with drumsticks + her husband who says "Oh sure yeah, you want a band? I will do anything you want because I love you."

If you know guitar, please, tell me what’s happening here! And if you DON’T know guitar, watch this anyway because it’s very fun and even more fun in person!

Then the Gimme Gimmes came on and opened with Jolene, and me and my fanny pack were in Dance Mode! Somewhere between Dancing Queen and Straight Up, I DID trip in the pit and get pancaked by a beef man in cargo shorts. Other than two ocherish bruises decorating my left knee and left elbow, I am okay!

Before we get into the guts of this Dispatch, two near-wins, because near-wins need celebrating! I submitted a poem to HAD’s call for list-poems. It did not get published! But Also: the night before the call-for-submissions email2 went out, I had a dream that HAD would open for submissions soon. This bodes well for my growing Powers.

Here are the two poems I have published previously at HAD, including this one which got pretty big in Horse Girl Circles.

Also, I made the waitlist for a sketch team I auditioned for, which is a double-win because A) I forgot about the audition until the morning of, and had a very limited time window to do it (the deadline was right after getting back from the honeymoon) B) It was a self-tape C) I only had 2 minutes to do 3 character bits! Fingers crossed I get called up to the majors, where I will get to be less-sweaty and less-frantic.

In 2014ish I saw an ad on the back of a magazine—either Vogue or Vanity Fair—for the inaugural release from the recently-revitalized3 brand Etienne Aigner. They released a boxy purse called the “stag bag,” at some point re-named by fans/consumers as the “box bag.” And I really wanted one! But they were $400+. Which was too much.

So I waited, and waited, and waited, and watched eBay, and I bought a stag bag on eBay in 2018. It was (and is) the most I’ve ever spent on a purse, $125, and boy was it WORTH IT. Here, let me show you what these bags look like:

Ooh, and may I say, ahhh? My eBay stag bag was new with tag, but no strap, so I took the chain from a Kohls purse and adapted. I’ve gotta say: these are the roomiest and easiest-to-organize purses despite being somewhat squatty. They have a back-zip pocket, a front open pocket and two interior sections (all of this, I’m saying about the regular size stag bag; there is a mini size that I have not fussed with). I am ROUGH on my stag bag and it’s held up with no visible damage. There’s a little wear on the underside of the handle, which you can feel, but it looks to be in very good shape, considering I have been using it as a subway weapon for the better part of 7 years.

I am always on the lookout for other stag bags in other colorways (mine is white and black and yellow). My dream is to find one on eBay or Mercari or Poshmark for $50 and snap it up (it happens!) OR to find a big version of the shiny metallic stag bag. This one is probably the most practical colorway I’ve ever seen. If you’ve read about my obsessive quest to find my dream desk, you know I can get a little bit fixated on things. I pretty much always have one eyeball trained on the stag bag resale market. This shearling one is VERY FUN. I loooooove love this one and am watching to see if it goes on sale, and I am confident I would use this one all the time but it’s very similar to my existing bag, so you should buy it instead. Anyway: I’ve probably spent a cumulative 24ish hours looking at these bags online over the last 11 years. But they don’t pop up often. They’re usually priced beyond what I’m willing to spend. And sometimes the colors are boring! But I just like looking at them. They satisfy a rectangular itch in my nice round brain.

On a related note, I have recently been…weird? About leather goods?

Do you know what I DON’T need? Literally any fancy, “durable,” “tasteful” office supplies. I have a Swarovski pen that I use to write poems. I have a nice fountain pen that I use to write my daily journal pages. And I have a couple of very fancy notebooks which I use and abuse, because that is what God made notebooks for.

I certainly do not need any of the little leather doodads that Levenger sells to mostly lawyers.

I don’t remember where I found out about Levenger; it could’ve been the Analog Attorney blog but it also could’ve been any thread online about “best bag for books.” The Levenger Oxford book tote is AMAZING. On the Levenger website they’re $70, IGNORE THAT, they are consistently $30-45 on eBay. They have six exterior pockets for books (also notebooks etc) and they hold ten zillion items inside. They are amazing.

I don’t know if the other products from Levenger are amazing. But I gaze upon them sinfully, desirously, though I do not need them even one small amount. Example: Look at this little leather “pocket briefcase” for index cards. It is $80 and that is BEFORE you personalize it with the initials HJH. Would I use it? Absolutely I would. And I know that because I am already using a perfectly acceptable and effective version of this. It is a $4 Cinnamoroll zipper baggie I keep in my purse, which is filled with index cards, pens and post-it notes. I use this “kit” multiple times a week, and never once have I thought “Gee, this would be way easier and faster if I had a little flip-open wallet specifically for index cards, made of pebbled full-grain leather.” AND YET I LUST! Levenger has a lot of cool and nice "reading, writing and thinking" tools, including desktop organizers for notecards, fountain pens (and fountain pen cases), an inexplicable Marilyn Monroe collection. But all I care about are the Pocket Briefcases.

Well, NOW, I’m thinking, “Hmm, do I want to give the ol’ traveler’s notebook a go?” Do you know what I mean when I say “traveler’s notebook”? It’s basically a leather cover you can cram with other notebooks, your planner, etc etc. There are the “official” Traveler’s Brand Notebook, and then there are different iterations, customized ones etc. This Etsy one, for example. I’m sure that, if my lifestyle were WAY different, this would be very handy. As I mentioned in a previous Friday Dispatch, I recently switched from a spiral-bound annual planner to a binder-style refillable one, and that’s been working great! But it isn’t going to fit into a traveler’s notebook cover. It’s a behemoth that lives on my desk. If I were to JUST use notebooks inside a traveler’s notebook cover, well, that wouldn’t make any sense. I use a variety of notebook sizes. There are two that are always in my purse and seven more that are on constant rotation. My purse selections are based around which of my notebooks will fit in which pockets. It DOESN’T make SENSE for me to WANT THIS. And yet I use a lot of my free time considering how different traveler’s notebook adaptations/layouts would look and work.

Then I saw this cute wallet from Portland Leather Company (DON’T NEED IT, I have an $8 Steve Madden wallet that is ADORABLE and devastatingly practical). That reminded me that I have always been interested in the Portland Leather Co. tote bags, especially their super-bright colors. So I look at their clearance items and then their “almost perfect sale.” And it’s all not quite what I want, or it’s too similar to what I already have. Then I think, “These remind me of the Madewell transport tote, why didn’t I ever buy one of those?” And then I’m on eBay looking at Madwell bags. THEN I remember I don’t like Madewell because the colors are ALL BORING. What was that company that had the fun bag colors? Oh! Cambridge Satchel Co.! They had fun neon and patchwork bags, why didn't I ever get a leather/faux-leather bag from them? Oh duh, because they're somehow both too bulky AND way too small. You know, what I REALLY want is the AmeriLeather patchwork backpack I used during college, which I carried until it completely fell apart. Oh, but come on, when do I ever use a backpack? Maybe I need something briefcasey, but not businessy. Oh! Like that “medic bag” from Galen Leather. Hmm, I wonder if THAT’S on eBay…

So, that’s how I’ve been spending my time lately. Looking at leather goods (small and large) which I do not intend to buy. And stickering my own face on a mouse in overalls.

While “cleaning” my “desk,” I found a sheet of paper from an old planner.

(This is becoming a weirdly reminiscent/nostalgic/throwback newsletter!)

The reverse of this page reveals that this it is from my Ban.do brand planner from 2015. It was the October 2015 section. And I know exactly why I wrote out a karaoke song list in October 2015: I had just turned 21, and I was able to do karaoke! At BARS!

Somehow, though, in the 10 years since I wrote this list, I haven’t done all the songs! So, making that my goal for the remainder of Karaoke 2025: This year, I will sing You Don’t Own Me, Anything Goes4, Don’t You Get Me High, Telephone, Dancing With Myself, The Longest Time and Call Your Girlfriend at karaoke. Maybe all in one night!

No! I did not throw it away. It’s filed in my file cabinet, under “College Memories.”

Next week, I’m going to get you some Book Empties. It was going to be a full slate of “Everything I’ve Read Since April,” but then I managed to finish NINE books in the space of four weeks. So! You’ll get a “Book Empties: Q2 2025,” and then a “Book Empties: Just July, Apparently.” I’m also planning to write up an actual EMPTIES empties, of beauty products, at the end of this month! Featuring a lot of travel sizes, and some weird shit from my Archives. As part of my ongoing quest to buy less makeup, and use MORE makeup—in other words, not waste what I’ve got—I unearthed all my eyeshadow/lipstick/blush/face palettes, cleaned and sanitized them, and threw away any that were truly gross. Which was shockingly few! I’ve had some of these since high school5 and have used them consistently with only a few colors hitting the pan. The Gwen Stefani Urban Decay palette is, naturally, one of the most used-up palettes in the bunch.

Call this picture a…palette cleanser, if you will.

I’m wearing a different eye makeup look every day and trying to get real funky with it.

Along with all the Fine Leather Goods(TM) mentioned above, I also didn’t buy any of this. Here’s What I Did Not Buy This Week!

Okay, it’s Friday and I have to go do math with . See you later goodbye!