Now That's What I Call BAT: Volume 1

greatest hits + a short new essay + an entire album of music all about rocks!!

acceptance

Whenever I see someone holding the door open for me, like at the mall or the gym that’s inside the mall, and the distance between us is vast, like I’m just passing the weird $2.99 clothing store that’s across the mall from the gym, I always imagine that person just sorta holding that door open forever.

It’d be a small town thing — this one guy named Peter held the door open once for someone else and that person never came so Peter just kept holding the door open for the rest of his life. Peter would go home obviously and sleep and wake up and head back to the door and do it again.

The the community would rally around Peter and make sure he had enough money for rent and food, like he’d become a pet turtle your fifth grade class has to take turns keeping alive but only in the monetary sense since Peter could still get himself around and didn’t live inside his own shell.

I call this sorta thing a stalemate of kindness. Or that’s the term I just came up with.

Imagine two people walking at one another and both trying to go left , then both trying to go right, then laughing awkwardly and both trying again to go left, then another laugh, then left again and an even bigger laugh (we both went left??!) and so on and so forth for the rest of their lives.

Or two drivers at an intersection both imploring the other to go first. Imploring! Big hand waves at one another as they mouth “no you go” and “no you go seriously i insist’ back and forth and no one ever goes.

Or a married couple passing the last bite of their steak back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

Stalemates of kindness.

I’ll often avoid doing good things altogether for fear of finding myself in a stalemate of kindness. Maybe people think I’m mean, but they have no idea I’m doing them a huge favor by saving us both from an awkward encounter that might last the rest of our little lives.

I’ve always wanted to make a movie with absurd little things like this happening in the background. The main characters would see it and treat it as completely normal, that would just be the sort of place this was.

That movie could be dope, honestly. It’d be weird as a wombat but who cares. Why haven’t I made that movie? Am I too scared? Is life one big pile of stalemates of kindness in which we stop ourselves from doing things that might make us feel awkward or bad because we imagine we’ll be stuck in that awkard bad feeling for the rest of our lives?

Idk but this is awkward now so I gotta go oh wait you’re walking toward me here lemme just hold the door a sec -

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Support

olivia rafferty

‘s geological dreams!!

As a musician myself, I know personally how hard it is to make an album.

And that’s why I just gave money to the talented

olivia rafferty

, writer of

a constellation

and a musician who is putting out an album all about rocks. Here’s the origin:

Right now I am working on a huge project which has been going on for the last 2 years, and actually began with this newsletter. I’ve been writing songs about geology. Why? I am not a geologist! But during the pandemic I discovered the topic, and kept myself sane by watching a lecture every morning and taking notes. Geology honestly kept me from losing my cool during lockdowns. I wanted to share all the cool stuff I learned with everyone, and as a songwriter, what better way than to write songs?

Amazingly, I got funding from the UK’s Geologists’ Association, and I wrote a whole album, and it has now been recorded, mixed and mastered. It’s now just a case of releasing it. But that’s hard to do alone.

She got funding from the UK Geologists’ Association which I’m sure everyone in the UK knows is nearly impossible. Those stingy rat bastards at the UK Rock HQ almost never fund rock research let alone a concept album, but Olivia did it. And now, she’s raising money to make her album. No, actually, she ALREADY raised the $ she needed in just five days - 3500 pounds which, lemme tell you, is a ton. It’s 1.75 tons, in fact (lfg).

Now Olivia upped the goal to 5000 pounds aka 2.5 tons (lfgggg). Deets below!

If you love music or if you love rocks, check out Olivia’s kickstarter page here. What you do after that is your decision and your decision alone.

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Now that’s what I call BAT: Volume 1

A lot of you knucklefarts are new which means you’ve got no idea that all of my best essays are behind me!! That’s right, babe, you missed the glory days! I’m like Third Eye Blind and you missed Jumper and Semi-Chrmd Life and now you gotta go to their Summer Gods tour with Yellowcard.

ANYWAY - here are a few of my fav older pieces for all the new kids:

comments

1. the floor is open - speak your truth speak your lie idgaff (flyingfk)