Hey Whose Sword Is This

Clap Along if You Feel Like Happiness Is the Truth

How to Leave Town

Chief Live/Laugh/Love Correspondent Matt Spradling

Hello, it's root beer Matt. Think of it like whiskey Alex. There is no "but." I should be taken exactly as seriously. Also the root beer has tequila inside of it.

So lately I've been doing this thing where I get older. Think of it as like a diet; the juice I'm taking in excessive amounts of is the gradual but inexorable march of time (back pain), and the things I'm shedding in the process are sentimentality, romantic views of the world and major storehouses of childlike wonder.

You know how changes don't happen all at once, they're more of a gradual evolution and then something might happen to highlight it and you say "oh wow look at this change" and then you play up that moment for stories as the time or event that caused you to change, but really it was just a broad, organic spectrum of time and life that even now continues to occur? You know, that? Lately that change highlight for me has been realizing that I don't feel as much wonder about the world. I don't know, you read the previous paragraph, so I won't linger on it.

I think when you're in high school and then your early 20's, that's the age when your brain fully comes online and you learn about the world and discover what you believe and what you enjoy and everything is bursting like spring and overwhelmingly emotional, and mundane things like your favorite band releasing an album take on a genuinely religious level of importance and awe. I had that in spaaades. Every time I see a Bright Eyes album cover my eye twitches. I have made my feelings about Radiohead and Liverpool abundantly clear in this newsletter before and those are two of the things that most carry that flame onwards, so to speak in as pretentious a way possible. Idk I fell asleep last night caressing a copy of The Road like any faithful white man on a full moon.

And yet those feelings surface more and more rarely. I can't remember what the last thing to make me cry was, nothing gives me chills, and I certainly can't think of something recently that made me feel like I did in my bedroom in high school, hunched over comically large speakers, playing guitar to the songs I loved with red mood-lighting on.

I don't mean for this to sound negative. I'm not sure whether it's positive or negative. It's just honest. And I think that illuminates the heart of the matter - it's not prescriptive at all, it's just descriptive. I'm not assigning or creating meaning where none is deserved, I'm just living in the present, and my present just happens to be a 28 year old with slight love-handles who gets blisters when he runs and likes to play games on the weekend after his very privileged job has exhausted him ad infinitum.

Used to, when I'd visit my hometown, I'd drive around the neighborhood, and my childhood house, and my old favorite roads imbued with countless memories of nights driving around listening to very specific Radiohead songs (I admit I have a problem.) It was all very romantic, and all the things you'd expect - peaceful, yet sad, and fun, yet painful. But lately, I just haven't felt any of that. I drive through these places, and a road is a road. An intersection is an intersection. A park is a park. They once were mine, but are not anymore, and not in that mournful way, but merely a factual way. There are new kids driving new cars living their new lives there and not even listening to The Killers while they do it. And that's just how it works. Is that why people get so hung up on tradition? Like if there were things the new kids did that were the same as the things I - and the kids before me - did, then those things would be alive and we would feel some connection to something bigger than ourselves? Extrapolate that to whatever extent you want. But I don't think that thinking is quite real. It would just be something manufactured to make us feel like we still had that spark. Unless maybe whatever that hypothetical Thing is actually served some practical cultural purpose.

I'm also keenly aware of how privileged a position it is to have ever had these fond memories and places to call my own at all. How many children grew up without that, or desperate to get away from places that held nothing but painful and empty experiences?

When I proposed to Sam this time last year, we took a stab at sentimentality. We drove around to all the old milestones that held significance in our relationship, and listened to the music we used to listen to while we did it. I can't speak for her, but to me, this was a way of honoring the history of our relationship even though it didn't necessarily cause me to feel that same thrill and wonder as before. It wasn't visiting church; it was walking past a tree where there used to be a treehouse and simply acknowledging that. Tip of the hat. Sorry about all the squirrels. Plus I think the location where I asked her out has since become a McDonald's parking lot, so that really sets the soul ablaze.

But in a way that's just as nice, if not nicer; you know how with music, most of our listening pleasure comes from the anticipation of knowing a good part is coming up, and how that actually kind of carries over into experiencing stories (i.e. movies and games), casting doubt onto the concept of spoilers and pristine first experiences being what it's all about? You know, that? Maybe it's the same with life - experiencing the first time around is great and profound and fun, but it's also great to sort of have those things as trophies on your shelf, being able to visit and remember and honor them, and of course that doesn't make you feel the way you did when that trophy was initially earned, but it's nice to have a collection, and it's nice to pay your respects. Maybe the pessimistic observer might call that a museum and the optimistic a home.

Back around last fall, when we were living in a house which was a Pretty Bad time, I wrote some of this thing titled "How To Move". I wrote about how I sometimes harbor this notion about disappointing my childhood self and how that really gets to me, but ultimately I have honored him about as much as possible because I am still him, and I can trace the throughlines from here to there and while there's been unimaginable growth, in a way, very little has changed for me. When habits and propensities and strengths and weaknesses remain largely consistent, you can almost map out what will happen in the future - not in a no-free-will way, just an averages kind of way. It lets you draw a line between him and you now, laying in bed waiting for catastrophe.

You have so many of the same needs as before, like hiding and playing. Then there was more asking what is really different between toys and games and sports? More regarding sports, and how it's important not to mock playfulness despite the abrasive contrast between such inherent whimsey and some of the most toxic traits present in fandom at large. And then more and more, and something about the suffering of men and how you simply can't generalize and say the world is easy for hordes of suicidals. Some wondering about how much emotion we all feel that is innately the urge to protect our childhood selves. A conclusion about how really those throughlines still exist because I am still him, and why shouldn't I be, other than if the world twisted and broke him in some way? And how that is as much as I can do to honor him: to value and preserve.

And yet, I can't preserve that, because it's not a different entity, it's just me. In the end, you're still just you. Quite literally. There isn't a past you. There are only memories of a time you made certain decisions for certain reasons that may not be the same in the present. Places are still places, but their context and appearance change eventually.

Memories remain memories, for all their splendor and all their impotence. I don't know, I'm root beer Matt.

I Am Tinkerbell

Chief Vessel Correspondent Marina Martinez

It's funny, sometimes, how the mental image you hold of yourself differs so vastly from how others perceive you. It can sometimes be jarring, especially when the opinion comes from a group of people close to you. And of course, I'm not MAD at my friends for unanimously voting me as 'person most likely to cry somewhere at a party' or 'person most like creamed corn' during a fun (remotely-played) party game, but those descriptions vastly differ from how I view myself. Friends, apparently, view me as bland (I've never had creamed corn, I'm assuming this is accurate), vulnerable, and the type of person who would be comfortable enough to cry at a party. As I'm writing this, I view myself as a vengeful valkyrie ready to paint my lips red with the blood of my enemies.

There is obviously some sort of disconnect here. I think I can explain it, though.

I don't remember the person I was before I Realized. Whoever she was, that version of me toed a fine line between happily naive and blissfully ignorant of the world around her. She was perfectly content with her own sheltered life and did not know/chose not to learn about what was happening in the world around her. It must've been simpler, then, to be happy. Because I'm not sure about you, but it's heckin' hard to be happy nowadays. It's something you have to fight for on a daily basis. Just a scrap of serotonin takes more effort than the most hardcore jazzercise workout you've ever done.

So, internally, I'm aware that I have Realized - I scroll through social media pages and am heartbroken and furious and have to look up wholesome memes and 'Critical Role Funny Moments' compilations on YouTube to regain some semblance of normality. But the problem here is that somewhere between my Realization and now, I became very good at lying. And you probably have, too.

Realizing is simple. It's the involuntary experience of understanding that life is pain and anyone that tells you otherwise is selling something. I'm not being pessimistic, you understand, I'm just quoting The Princess Bride. Realizing can happen by reading the news or thinking about the fact that you'll die one day or eating too much dairy in one sitting and having a very intense Bathroom Experience. At some point in our lives, we Realize that the world we live in isn't fair, and then we all make the conscious decision to say we're still okay with things, generally.

We all Realize, at some point. For me, it happened when I left home at 18 and went to school. For others, it happens years earlier or decades later. But we all Realize. It takes some indeterminable amount of time, but once it's done, we are overcome with such a maelstrom of emotion that we instinctually just...ignore it. We pin it down and bottle it up and stuff it so far under our skin that nobody will ever, ever see it. And then we smile.

Maybe I am a happy person! I don't know anymore! My hair is usually fun colors, I laugh way too easily, and I don't remember ever being able to confront another human publicly in my life. Combined with my known social anxiety and the rest of my bad-brain cocktail, it's a wonder I have the capacity to feel very much more than happiness all the time. But is it genuine, or have I gotten so good at lying I've even managed to fool myself? Realistically, I can only feel one thing at a time, and it's usually just exhaustion.

To save myself a headache, I've decided that I'm Tinkerbell, now.

Associating myself with different fictional characters is the only way I know how to have a personality. (That's one of the disorders talking, probably.) In the past few years I've felt like Gimli, just an angry dwarf with a competitive streak and a height complex. Sometimes I feel more like Obi-Wan Kenobi, trying to be perfect and pragmatic but honestly ending up being the only adult in a situation (usually during a D&D game). Realistically, though, I am Tinkerbell. Or, no, I'm just an NPC fairy, I'm not anywhere near cool enough to be The fairy. I am small, magical, so filled with emotion that I can't multitask, and actually pretty useless in a fight.

This is who I need to be right now in order to process things, thank you. Get ready for next week when I create my fairy-sona live on Twitch.

Should I Buy a Pair of Cowboy Boots?

Chief Heels Correspondent Alex Speed

It seems innocent enough, right?

They're just like really long Blundstones.

This decision has plagued my thoughts for about a month so as any insane person would do - I have made a pros and cons list and am asking my dear reader for help in this process.

My future is in your hands, please be gentle.

PRO: They would protect my little feet and ankles and legs from possible snake bites. I do a lot of walking in weird places like ranches and the woods. Places where snakes and spiders lurk for their next victim. If I were constantly wearing a giant leather calf condom, their attacks would be significantly less successful. I also like to think that the boot itself would intimidate my potential snake and spider enemies, causing us to avoid any and all unwanted conflict.

CON: I live in Montana. I drive an F150. I listen to country music. I say "howdy!" immediately upon entering any and all buildings. If I also start wearing cowboy boots then I think my next presidential election ballot just auto-populates "Ronald Reagan's Ghost" which would really bum me out policy-wise, but it would also be cool to see the first ghost president. This con is doubled because I worry about the legal implications of electing someone who is technically already dead. Also Ronald Reagan did a bunch of bad economics and racism and I doubt death has made him any more tolerant.

PRO: Depending on what shoes I am wearing I am either 6'1.5" or 6'2". This is a fact that bothers me a lot and I always just tell people I am 6'2" because I have plenty of insecurities as it is and I don't need to throw height into my mental health arena. If I were constantly rocking a saucy pair of scootin' boots then I would have no problem perpetuating this little height fib.

CON: Imagine this: I am at a bar or, better yet, a Chili's Bar and Grille. There is suddenly some sort of ranch-related emergency in the parking lot. Naturally, the crowd of concerned Big Mouth Bite enthusiasts looks to the tall brown-haired guy in cowboy boots to solve the potential bovine emergency. They carry me outside to the scene - which is probably a cow giving birth in the parking lot of a Chili's - and the crowd screams "DO SOMETHING TALL GUY IN WRANGLERS" and I have to explain to the crowd that  I don't know how to birth a calf, I just didn't want to get spider bites on my delicate little ankles. I am then laughed out of the state of Montana and have to move back to Austin and get my ears pierced.

NEUTRAL WILDCARD: Cowboy boots are good for motorcycle time because the leather protects my dainty little feet from stuff like the road and the gear shift and the heat that comes from sitting on a little machine whose job is to make a ton of tiny explosions that make you move really fast. This is neutral because too much motorcycle time could be bad. I dunno man I just work here.

As you can see there are a lot of (Reese's) pieces to consider here.

Please leave a note to weigh in on this as I will certainly still be agonizing over this decision for months to come.

Stall Graffiti

I've never used an exclamation point in my life, so this praise cannot be directed at me and therefore is not worthy of these pixels. Just kidding. But please don't feed the staff.

This one I choose to believe is about me. Thank you Mr. Apple.

Newsletter articles have almost won the pulitzer, like, a couple times. So yes please.

Forwarding this to webnode.

:(

;(

Quiz: The Beatles or The Beach Boys?

Chief Trivia Correspondent Matt Spradling

Office Chart

Girls - MARINA

My anxiety wrote this, actually.  -Marina

For No One - Houndmouth

One time I reviewed a song called For No One by The Beatles. This is a different song. It is shockingly just as sad. It is eerie and special and listening to it feels like having an idea you really care about that no one else has time to hear about.  -Alex

Zenith - Kavinsky

This is, in many ways, the perfect song. Not *most* ways, but in some very important ways (e.g. containing jazz, pristine 80's vibe, strong building momentum, sounds like Daft Punk, ends with jazz.) You know Nightcall, that one Kavinsky song that is the one everyone has heard before? I like this one even more.  -Matt

Turn It Off - The Book of Mormon OBC Recording

This is my piece this week but in song form and sung by Mormons.  -Marina

Liberty Street - The New Basement Tapes

The other night I got really sad and played this song on the piano for about twenty minutes. It's a great example of Honky-Tonkish-but-also-kinda-sad. Which for those playing along at home is my whole ass brand.  -Alex

Skrting On The Surface - The Smile

This is a strange combination of pure chaos (the time is in I think 11/10(?) and the drummer did literally only one take, performed while listening for the first time) and chill, subdued, glassy smoothness, and the result is beautiful. I'm mad at The Smile for not even announcing their album yet but this is a great gift in the meantime.  -Matt

Shelved - The Mountain Goats

The Mountain Goats have an album called Goths which contains no guitars and is all about goths (the 80's Seattle kind, not the historical kind) and growing old and delicious delicious melodrama. I thought there was only one song on it that I really loved the production of (the opener) but came across this which is equally cool. Not gonna tour with Trent Reznor / Third of three, bottom of the bill / You can't pay me to make that kind of music / Not gonna swallow that pill / The ride's over / I know / But I'm not ready to go / Maybe dad is right / I'm still young / And I can write C++ just as good as anyone / I know this guy at LucasArts / He says they're looking for hands  -Matt

Cosmic Hero - Car Seat Headrest

This might be my favorite album to like - actually listen to? Most of my favorites are sort of like weird pretentious wines where you want to savor them on occasion, but, similar to its older brother, this one can just kind of go forever, is a meaty, bonafide no-skips, and somehow sounds incredibly unique despite also essentially using the same guitar sound for the whole hour. Like a dreamy rock carousel that hits you once per revolution with a baseball bat wrapped in cutting emotional insight.  -Matt

Images

Banners - The King Is Dead, The Decemberists

Sword - You tell me man