2018 here we come!!!

a job opening, a new logo, and a brand new game -- "who said it?"!!

Hello! It’s a new year — 2018 is gonna be one for the ages!! Anyone else feeling like we’re finally gonna catch the Golden State killer this year? It’d be a Daring, Notable Achievement (DNA).

Also, Harry and Meghan are gonna do their royal wedding! Excited to see them be a part of the royal family for decades to come.

Lotta good content coming our way this year too! I’m most pumped for A Star Is Born. If Bradford Cooper does what he does best (sit in a limo and say “I jus wannatakeanotherlookatchya”) that movie will win the Oscar Meyer. I mean, who else could even win, Green Book!?!? Here’s a quick back of the napkin doodle of what I imagine that moment in the film might look like:

Oh also! There’s a lot of new subscribers here from the i think my son hates me essay - welcome! I’m sure this is not what you expected, but hey you know what they say about expectations - they give you an EXPEC (removing ur pectoral muscle) and replace it with a TAT of IONS.

Hey I don’t make up the sayings I just say em - don’t kill the massager!

Lot’s to discuss this week — including an actual job opening, our new logo, and so much more! So let’s get into it.

👩‍🏭 IMPORTANT JOB OPENING 👩‍🏭

This newsletter is growing fast! It’d grow faster if I promoted the right way on social but I can’t because it makes me insecure, SO I am looking to HIRE someone to help.

SEEKING: a creative upstart with a finger on the pulse, a digital native with a heart for the latest trend — edgy, keen, viral, a rockstar, a classical pianist, the frontwoman for an emo-ska cover band. Ok no but seriously - no bits - I really am looking to hire someone for like 10-15 hours to help be the order to my chaos, the calm to my storm, the devil to my Prada.

You’d be creating and implementing a social strategy for getting BAT essays out to the peeps / communities that might be interested. Also, I’m gonna launch the Help Wanted podcast this year, and I’ma need a lot of help with the roll out for that on the social side.

The job is remote, of course, but you have to live in Slay City, CA.

I’m asking here first cuz, like, y’all already dig and understand what we’re up to here, and that’s like 80% of the job. So if you’re interested, holler at botharetrue@substack.com - send over whatever you want and let’s talk. Know someone else who might be? Send this to them ya goof.

wanna help make BAT famous like Mike Ceras> Apply now

Introducing…BLOBBY!

I am pleased as a plum to announce - we’ve got a new logo, and its name is Blobby:

Created by the insanely talented Nancy Zuo, blobby is one half of the Both Are True experience. The other half will be revealed soon in a post that walks through the process of creating these lil guys with Nancy. Stay tuned, and for now please say hi to Blobby its v shy!

Resolutions can kiss my butt

New year, new you, right? Nope.

New year, same you.

You’re a perfect lil snail, so don’t you go changing a god darn thing.

I for one am excited for 2018. I have so damn much to write about that I literally can’t find a computer hard drive big enough to store it all! Seriously the ‘geniuses’ at Apple told me, and I quote, “sir you have too many great ideas, the hard drives we’ve built simply cannot hold that much raw genius and scathing cultural commentary.”

They also said the 47 Terabytes of high-res banana photos I have should be deleted but, like, that makes no sense! They’re just bananas - they weigh NOTHING comparted to the heft of ideas. Geniuses, more like Idiots!

Why all the bananas? Glad you asked. I’m launching a competitor ‘prove you’re not a robot’ CAPTCHA service called CAUGHT U SLIPPIN where the only test is to identify which photos are bananas and which aren’t. But here’s the trick - they’re all going to be bananas! The robots will be like ‘this is too easy, surely one of these is a plantain or a street light or a bus?”

And then I’ll scream “caught u slippin!’ via a pre-recorded video and the robots will be so ashamed they’ll never use the internet again.

Advice, Get ur Advice Here!

Last year I started doling out advice. It was fun and, from anecdotal evidence, a success: I saved 17 marriages from ending and made sure 32 divorces went through (some couples did both!).

With that, Help Wanted the Advice Column (and soon to be podcast) is gonna be a big part of 2018. What’s that mean for you? You can finally solve the problems of your little life!

Do you or someone you love need advice? Have a question you’re struggling to solve? A dilemma that no pro/con list can answer? Great! Send your question to Help Wanted to botharetrue@substack.com!

Still don’t believe me? Have a gander at the Help Wanted’s from last year which all now live here on the Help Wanted page of this newsletter!

Stuff that made me go ‘whoa’

Whenever I bumble around the internet and find something cool I go - ‘I wanna share this on BAT cuz it’s cool and maybe others will think it’s cool too’. So here are a few of those things.

• Why “Escape Room” is one of the top genres on Spotify - this essay is a lil old - 1 2016 so like 3 years - but it explains so much about how the Spotify Algorithm thinks about us and our tastes.

• Every Noise At Once - Reading the article above led me here, an insanely cool site by Glenn McDonald, a ‘data alchemist’ at Spotify and the dude who named the “Escape Room” genre. The site is inane! It grabs an insane amount of information from Spotify’s API and displays a map of ALL genres on Spotify and how they relate to each other (“down is more organic, up is more mechanical and electric; left is denser and more atmospheric, right is spikier and bouncier”). There’s links to playlists for each genre, top genres for each artist, etc. It’s wild.

  • For example, I’m jamming to this Japanese ambient badass woman Qrion. So I look her up on ENAO (there’s a search bar for artists in top right corner), and I find that she’s most associated with Japanese House music. So now I click into that and can get several playlists of just Japanese House as well as all the related genres! I’ll never run out of cool music and you know what they say: you can’t die if you’re listening to a song, so I’ll live forever. (and therefore laugh forever, love forever)

    

new game: who said what?

Ok i just made up a new game - I’m gonna share two quotes and you guys have to decide which is real and which is fake.

Quote 1

I’d been told before that writers had to have two identities: their real-life one—who they are with their spouses and colleagues and friends—as well as another, who they become when they sit down to write. This second identity, I now saw, was fluid, as changeable as the weather, as unfixed as our emotions. As readers, we naturally expect novels to introduce us to a new cast of characters and dramatic events, but could it also be that the writer has to reinvent himself for the purpose of telling each new story? If he’s free to invent a different voice for each new book, then which is his true one? And how is it remotely fair for Steinbeck to possess so many voices when I, even after dutifully expelling my two thousand pages of wretched prose, still didn’t have a single one?

— author Richard Rohr on the relationship between reader and a specific persona of the writer created for that particular book. In The Destiny Thief, dope book.

Quote 2

I think most people who drink alcohol don’t really like doing it. I think they do it just because it’s what everyone else is doing. Like I was at a rager the other night, halfway down a beer bong that the brothers of Sigma Chi set up, and sure it was fun, sure I was jovial, but did I enjoy it?

I walked home that night and couldn’t even remember what type of government was best. Scary stuff.

I write an almanac, but no one knows its me because I say its by “Poor Richard.” No one would dare think I was poor! Or Richard.

*to himself* sneaky little Ben, you got em again.

— Ben Franklin, founding father and inventor of the kite

🗣 Comments!

If you’re a lurker, someone who reads the comments and thinks ‘ah, that could never be me' - today’s your day! Let’s do a hi and hello for all the new kids. Just reply with some info about yourself (SSN and Mom’s Maiden are always fun !) and then answer one or more of the questions below!

And if you’re an oldBat, a veteran of the game, a lifer, a true and trieder - respond and offer to be a mentor or share some wisdom about life - you MUST have some if you’ve been reading BAT.

1. Who are you, who were you, and who will you be?

2. What are your 2018 resolutions?

3. Do you know anyone who might wanna do the job stuff I wrote about above?

4. Is Blobby a cutie or what?