Fireflies // a guy on a buffalo sneezes into a bar wearing visible mending
he orders a tea resin, to go
Welcome to Fireflies, the recommendations letter that arrives at the First Quarter of the moon cycle. This is the one where Addison makes you hold all the things she likes gently in your hand – like a small child who keeps bringing you leaves at the park.
Somebody tell Paul Revere he’s fired, because I’m already running around banging on doors and spilling an oil lamp screaming that the comet is coming! THE COMET IS COMING! The redcoats are across the ocean but the green tail is in the damn sky!
Last seen in these parts by our Neanderthal cousins about 50,000 years ago, the green comet is here to make an éntránce and cause a scene. She’ll be closest to Earth in the darkest hours of this Thursday evening, February 2nd, sashaying across the Milky Way. You’ll want to grab a telescope or zesty pair of binocks for the best views, but more importantly you’ll want to get as far away from the sights of the big city to minimize light pollution interference. Check the weather, cross your fingers, and make a wish; this is a once-in-many-lifetimes opportunity to catch some luck from a falling star(ish), put it in your pocket, and save it for a rainy day/millennium.
While you’re prepping your celestial wishlist, here are a few more earth-bound delights to add a little sparkle to your daily grind. Oh, and the old ones are free for public viewing now too! Just in case you wanted to spend more money on stationery supplies, or try to pretend we’re still in the fun part of winter, or maybe even get a visual representation of 50 of America’s creepiest cryptids. The truth is out there !!! But the fun is in here 😈
Come with me, darlings, back into the early days of the internet, when we got YouTube recommendations from our friends instead of an algorithm, and scarred our impressionable young minds for life with harmless-sounding phrases like ‘salad fingers’. This is one of those golden early gifts of the world wide web, if a bit more obscure than Old Gregg and Charlie the Unicorn. This marvelous creation is an amalgamation of footage from a low-budget wild west film shot in the ‘70s and the musical stylings of an early 2000s Texas band called Jomo & the Possum Posse, and it does not make a lick of damn sense. It’s deliciously delightful. The theme song will haunt you for the rest of your days. You will lose hours of sleep wondering why and how the hell it exists. I give you, with great affection, “Guy On a Buffalo”.
TikTok made me buy this. Maybe Chinese data mining is okay after all! Tea resin is tea that has been fermented and pressed into tiny, portable pieces, and in the shape of a moon cake by this brand in particular. They’re wrapped in colorful tin foil and feel like a decadent little treat each time you pluck one out of the canister, perfect for the moodiest dregs of wintry days. Plus, no tea bags to ruin a marriage over.
More of a tip than a rec, but did you know you can filter podcast episodes by ‘not played’ on Spotify?? This is my best pod binging advice, especially for the shows with no skips that’ll help you get through the ungodly amount of hours required to paint every square inch of a 1br apartment in the dead heat of a Brooklyn summer, twice. Old dependables like You’re Wrong About, Reply All, and crowd (New York media/alt comedy podsphere) favorite, StraightioLab.
The trending practice of visible mending, which aims to extend the lives of our most beloved items while allowing the natural aging and preserving processes to add character instead of stealing shine. There are lots of examples on aesthetics-based sites like Pinterest, as well as entire web pages dedicated to sharing illustrations and inspirations for others to follow.
Sneezing.
My sister’s new puppy, Waylon, who I flew home to meet this weekend while he still has puppy face. Unfortunately puppy face does come with a side of puppy teeth, but thankfully it also comes with puppy-hasn’t-grown-into-his-legs-and-falls-over-constantly-in-very-adorable-ways, too.
A quote from William Sebrans’s “What I Know For Sure”, which is boiling over with invaluable truths. This one is particularly helpful to keep in mind for those of us prone to over-extending our honesty muscles. “Truth, without beauty, is a soul-less tattered flag rallying no one and nothing real. Beauty, without truth, is a cracked, hollow vessel; a decorative container for gilded dung”
I made a public Spotify playlist of all the songs previewed at the top of the newsletter if you’d like to experience the jarring vibe shift of passing between indie sad girl anthems and Y2K pop monstrosities. Do NOT use this as an excuse to snoop through my playlists. God may judge me, but his crimes far outnumber my own. Yeah, I am referring to the One Direction playlist. Buzz off.
See you at the full moon, sunshines!
Addicat