Is a 🌭 a 🥪? (or a 🌮)
Annie’s post from yesterday, titled Do you have questions about tacos?, wherein she highlights a small informative zine about tacos she created to help answer all of your pressing questions, made me immediately think about The Sword And the Sandwich, a newsletter “about the dismal state of American politics, the far right, and .... sandwiches.”
Specifically, Annie’s offering made me think about Notable Sandwiches #89: Hot Dog where the author takes an academic look at the true nature(s) of a hot dog in trying to answer the question— Is a hotdog a sandwich?.
I shared this issue last year amongst a group of friends I do breakfast with monthly, where we gather to discuss some topic in current social, political, and economic discourse and attempt to solve it from your privileged, white, male, upper class perspectives in under an hour. Most of us are liberals at heart, and honestly want to solve these problems, but we don’t know enough collectively to do so, so we mostly eat breakfast.
Back to hot dogs, and tacos.
Responses to my sharing of #89: Hot Dog with this group included:
“These questions are why we need academics--and the internet! Ha.”
“If you need more inspiration to read it, you get to learn about lumpers and splitters!”
“My oldest told me that the big debate at his camp last week was whether a hot dog was a sandwich or a taco. lol”
The results of these responses, the discussion that followed, and the original newsletter are answers to the following questions:
Are tacos sandwiches?
No.
How are hot dogs and tacos related?
They are siblings.
Annie is less concerned with the big and deep questions about tacos (and likely sandwiches, or hot dogs).
This is probably a better the best approach.
Although it doesn’t impact my life in the slightest, I’m thinking about unsubscribing from Jack’s blog.
It isn’t necessarily the constant reboots of his blog that bothers me— I do that frequently enough myself, or have in the past. Rather, it’s my RSS reader exploding on what seems like an every-fortnight basis as a result that is getting rather annoying.
I’m far behind on my reading of The New Yorker, and I’m okay with that.
Aside from the delay caused by December’s postal strike, back issues have been slowly piling up. My current read is from December 9, 2024. It’s fantastic.
Except, of course, for the ongoing coverage of Trump’s election win— the first in a long series of articles about the foolish things he’ll say and do. Everything else that interests me in the magazine feels timeless.
Recently, I read about Lake Tahoe’s bear population and the divide between residents who want to live in harmony with them and those who see them as enemies in a never-ending war on nature. This week, there’s a long-form piece on Argentina’s president, charting his rise to power and his ill-informed, poorly executed attempts to reshape the country’s economy. Unfortunately, the portrait of Javier Milei reads a little too much like a portrait of Trump.
As part of my morning routine, I work through a long-form piece every day or two, filling the gaps with shorter articles. I gravitate toward book and film reviews and have even come to enjoy the magazine’s fiction.
Right now, ten back issues sit stacked on my shelf, including the 100th-anniversary edition— alongside two back issues of The Walrus still waiting for my attention. But I’m in no rush. Some of the content may be out of date by the time I get to it, but that’s not why I subscribe. I do it for the routine, the habit it helps me form, and as an intentional way to spend time away from yet another screen.
It's been a while. I'm still thinking about what digital spaces look like for me moving forward.
I'm drawn to something like Matt’s long-running, sporadically updated blog, Submitted For Your Perusal. There's something appealing about the irregular posting schedule, the variety of content, and the fact that it simply exists— ready for whenever something needs to be shared.
I’m still grappling with the balance between personal, private content and what I choose to make public. Even within the public sphere, there are distinctions: things I want to remember, interesting finds from others, and my own creative contributions.
Adding to the mix, I recently joined Bluesky as @kvl.me to explore whether it holds any value for me.
I had the idea today to start generating more ideas on a regular basis, to find any semblance of creativity that still exists inside me.
This morning while journaling I came up with this list:
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Bacon and maple flavoured kombucha.
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Monthly contributions to https://thelocalist.substack.com/— thoughts on becoming reacquainted with my city
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Weekly coffee club: same time and location; whomever shows, shows.
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Urban bocce league.
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A website that collects nothing other than my random / stupid ideas.
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Spray-paint & stencil T-Shirt Pop-Up (with J.K.)
- bring-your-own-shirt
- Banana Kingdom station; banana prints
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Roy McDonald Day: a day to celebrate all things Roy (a mini-media festival)
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Bookshop notes drop: items placed into books in used bookstores.
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(not entirely new) Yours To Discover: large canvas with Ontario postcards mod podge onto it.
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Brainstorm an ideal PhD for me.
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An unofficial history of ... (some random object).
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Start handmaking my own notebook / journal inserts for my A5 notebook cover.
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A presentation on, How to Make Fudge. Me having been a Fudgemaker and all.
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Blackout Poetry in Books I don’t care to read.
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Merge two boardgames into one: swap pieces, or integrate graphics from one into the other
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Create a card or board game
- Carcassonne like game, in cards
- Albert’s New Year’s game in cards
- Albert’s New Year’s game in tiles
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Hockney Style Photo Collage of ?? (and print it for the wall)
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Build a bike from scratch (with Squeaky Wheel — London Cycle Link)
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Write a short story— less than 1000 words. About, well anything.
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Write a children’s story. Less than 250 words.
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Start a social club.
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Write mini sagas for all fiction works I read
...
The list above isn’t all that bad for idea generation, a practice I haven’t completed in some time. The highlighted items are likely easy wins, low-lifts, or things I can collaborate on with James that might not take that much work.