This is the first Book Pile, or Tsundoku, reading recap from 10/1/2023. It was inspired by the word Tsundoku. Wikipedia defines Tsundoku this way,
Tsundoku (積ん読) is the phenomenon of acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one’s home without reading them. The term is also used to refer to books ready for reading later when they are on a bookshelf. A stack of books found after cleaning a room.
That is what this newsletter seeks to describe. My book piles.
Books/Audiobooks
Doppelganger
by Naomi Klein 2023, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
What a strange book. half memoir, half manifesto with a premise that sounds like a joke. Naomi Klein is often confused for Naomi Wolf, and that launches an exploration into the double in culture, latent fascism, and COVID-19 denialism.
I wrote a longer post about this book for From the Library and this site. Check it out here.
LINK
Credit: Santa Monica Press
Freewaytopia
By Paul Haddad 2021, Santa Monica Press
A history of Los Angeles through our highway system! This book is amazing. I learned so much. During and after WWII, the government of California, through the Department of Transportation (Cal-Trans), built highways as possible to move tanks and jeeps to the Navy ports. In the 50s and 60s, white communities LA communities welcomed highway expansion and development, but Black and immigrant communities were frequently displaced and had their houses taken from them. By the 1970s, with expensive gas prices, terrible traffic congestion, lingering construction, and no more Federal funding, everything changed. Even white communities soured on freeways. By the 80s and 90s, they outright rejected them. Cal-Trans officials told the author they would never build another freeway in Los Angeles again. This great non-fiction book has so much to love, and I hope to read more histories that thoughtfully consider planning and urban development. If you’re interested in Los Angeles history, this is a must-read.
Credit: Beacon Press
Villains of All Nations
by Marcus Rediker 2005, Beacon Press
A class-conscious exploration of pirates! Rediker argues that pirates were villains of all nations because they disrupted capital flows and colonialism. The Golden Age of Piracy coincides with the truces between Britain, Spain, and France. Pirates didn’t just pillage booty. They also burned British warships, freed slaves, and took revenge against Navy officers who wronged them. On British Navy ships, rations were small, and generals were abusive. When the Dutch, British, and French Navies pillaged Africa and sold slaves, they were not seen as pirates, and the sailors on the ship were paid a flat wage. Pirates offered an alternative. They flattened hierarchies. Every pirate got a share of the booty, even the injured ones, in an early form of social security insurance! Pirates even had their own pigeon argot for communicating with sailors at port. The author carefully considers how pirates might have been villains to nations and capital flow, but they were proletarian and a more egalitarian alternative way of living for soldiers of the eighteenth century. This book is amazing. If you like pirates and class-conscious history, you gotta read it.
Short Statement of Purpose
I always wanted to write a newsletter where I briefly write about the books I read that week and share my passion for what I’m reading with others. If that’s of interest to you, this is such a newsletter! I welcome you into my book piles. Hello.
Us Saw sickos want to think about all ten Saw movies! This list ranks the franchise from best to worst.
Would you like to play a game? I created a Saw Score Card to grade each film on six criteria. I think the best Saws have creepy traps, gory kills, soap opera plots, a baffling twist at the end, cast recognizable celebrities to endure torture, and all shoehorned in a nonsense canon chronology. The more confusing, the better. I also made a bloody gears scorecard template with Canva, the perfect tool for creepy crafters like me.
I ranked the films by these criteria and ordered the list from best to worst because it’s less confusing that way. By all means, brutally murder me in the comments if you disagree with my ratings. Trigger Warning for discussions of torture, gore, and spoilers for all the Saw movies.
#1: Saw
Cary Elwes as Dr. Lawrence Gordon in Saw — Credit: Lionsgate
It spawned a ten-film franchise, predicted escape rooms, ignited the 2000s “torture porn” horror subgenre, and introduced Jigsaw, The Game Playing Serial Killer. Saw is a great horror movie. Its core premise of waking up chained to a pipe in a dirty bathroom is genuinely terrifying. The grime and rough edges make the vibe intense and the confusing plot forgivable. I argue Jigsaw is one of the twenty-first century’s most prolific Hollywood movie monsters. A frail, old, rich psychopath with no conscience and nothing to lose! The movie is quintessentially 2004: handheld digital cameras, music video style editing, and a flip phone provide essential plot development, with nu-metal credit sequences bookending the film. Yet it’s right before the moment cell phones became ubiquitous because pagers, chorded phones, and tape recorders are still vital plot points. The traps are practical, simple, and have incredible prop design. If you enjoy horror movies, Saw is essential for 2000s Hollywood horror.
Best Death/Trap? The Bathroom is iconic, but it has to be The Reverse Bear Trap that rips your head open mouth first. One of the few escapes in the series!
Saw Wins. The Only Must Watch On This List. The First Is The Best — Credit: Canvaa, created by author
#2: Saw II
Shawnee Smith as Amanda Young in Saw II — Credit: Lionsgate
How did they follow up the Locked Room indie horror hit? They gave them more money and opened up a whole haunted house! Jigsaw makes wacky traps like a wrist-splitting box or a gunshot door peephole and uses the cartoonish bad guy classic of “sleeping gas” to knock people out. Amanda’s back brings an exciting twist requiring a DVD burner — a plot almost as 2006 as her haircut. We meet the dumbest character in the series: a crooked cop, played by Donnie Wahlberg, Mark’s big brother and former Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch member. As each film explains, Jigsaw has informants in the City of Saw PD who work together to punish criminals and themselves.
Best Death/Trap? The needle pit. The needles get jabbed in the skin as the hands search for the key. Plus, when I was a teen, there was an urban legend that creeps go to clubs to stick people with AIDS needles. I imagined this was the pit where they got all the needles.
Saw II, More Traps, Less Sense, A Big Haunted House — Credit: Canvaa, created by author
#3: Saw X
Tobin Bell as John Kramer the Jigsaw Killer — Credit: Lionsgate
Saw X is the first Saw movie in almost 20 years that feels like an actual movie, not a confusing money laundering scheme. A comprehendible plot, a good twist that makes sense, and an actual justification for why the tortured people deserve it. Cancerman Jigsaw John makes a compelling protagonist, and the Elizabeth Theranos-esque villainess manages to be eviler than Jigsaw. Plus, Pigsaw Amanda (from Saw 1–7) helps make things actually scary and not just gross. I was scared because I didn’t know what would happen next despite this movie being a prequel, and I actually know what happens next.
It is really gross, though. I had to step out to the lobby to wait for some torture to end, and when I connected to the AMC Stubbs A-List Wifi, I had a quick existential crisis that obsessively watching and cataloging all the Saw movies might be a waste of life, and by Jigsaw rules thereby punishable by a painful test.
The tenth is not as silly as the preceding 8 movies, and I personally prefer the big-aughts silliness and stupidity to the gritty and gory humanizing of Jigsaw. I see Jigsaw as a deranged terrorist or monster who’s impossible to identify with, kinda of like Michael Meyers or Freddy Krueger.
But I must admit, they rebooted the franchise correctly. The movie is not stupid like most of the Saw movies. Everything’s in its right place. It actually has the same score as Saw II! I used kills as the tiebreaker, as Saw X has the lowest body count in franchise history, with only six. Plus, I prefer Saw II because it’s a haunted house movie.
Saw X, a respectiable Saw Movie — Credit: Canvaa, created by author
#4: Saw 3D: The Final Chapter
Costas Mandylor as Mark Hoffman in Saw 3D: The Final Chapter— Credit: Lionsgate
Saw 3D: The Final Chapter concludes Jigsaw’s confusing, gory glory in extra dimensions. The framing story is fun: a guy fakes being a Jigsaw victim for clout and publishes a harrowing memoir. He scams support groups for Jigsaw victims. Dozens of people across the City of Saw huddle each night in church basements to cope with Jigsaw’s tests.
The kills are Giallo-style silly gore, and blood flies from the screen in 3D because, in 2010, everything was 3D after the success of Avatar. And the plot is full of soap opera drama and canon shenanigans. Jigsaw’s wife is back, and the half-face cop goes nuts. We finally see what happened to the doctor from Saw! The face ripper mask finally goes off! Two dangling people have a kickfight over a sharp metal fan! This one is funny, fast, and playful, the Saw III that should have been.
Best Death/Trap? Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington plays a Neo-Nazi who gets melted to death in a car for one of the best deaths in the series. It’s on YouTube.
Saw 3D Answers The Questions And Brutally Murders Linkin Park — Credit: Canvaa, created by author
#5: Saw IV
Donny Wahlberg as Eric Matthews and Costas Mandylor as Mark Hoffman — Credit: Lionsgate
Jigsaw’s dead, and things get grosser, dumber, and more overwrought with contrived explanations for how Jigsaw strikes from beyond the grave. During Jigsaw’s autopsy, the cops find a tape in his stomach announcing he’s still playing games! Mark Hoffman replaces as a creeper evil psycho cop. Jigsaw grooms him into setting traps and carrying out his vision of skin ripping, skin sewing, and lots of gross skin stuff. The plot’s full of Jigsaw lore, introducing us to the Bride of Jigsaw and Jigsaw’s Attorney! We learn Jigsaw used to be a “non-profit” real estate developer who redeveloped urban factories into low-income housing until a guy carelessly opened a door too hard and hit his pregnant wife with a doorknob, causing her to miscarry. And right after that? He gets diagnosed with cancer! Jigsaw snapped. He’s been redeveloping his factories into torture factories.
Best Death/Trap? They make Donny put a noose around his neck and stand on a gigantic melting ice cube. Once it melts, two cubes smash his head. My favorite gruesome execution of the series. It’s so dumb, and it’s also on YouTube.
Saw IV Warns Us, Open Doors Slowly Because Of Horrible Consequences — Credit: Canvaa, created by the author
#6: Saw VI
Peter Outerbridge as William Easton in Saw VI — Credit: Lionsgate
It’s 2009! Jigsaw Vs. The Health Insurance! Jigsaw’s torturing the creeps who deserve it most: predatory lenders, insurance actuaries, lawyers, and brokers. “It’s a business! My decisions aren’t made this way!” the insurance attorney screams as he decides which employee’s life to save. That same guy denied Jigsaw treatment for his cancer. The traps are silly and look carnivalesque. The plot is simple, but the twist is alright. Saw IV was the end of torture porn. Paranormal Activity would make $193 million that year, or 839 times its $230,000 budget! Goodbye, torture porn, hello found footage, as the American empire stops shock and awe and starts the surveillance era.
Best Death/Trap? The shotgun scary-go-round is one of six traps with a shotgun rigged up to shoot somebody in the face, but it is the only shotgun trap with a carousel. It’s also a reminder that your boss would probably prefer to murder you before facing consequences or experiencing discomfort.
Saw VI Sees Jigsaw Get FIRE Pilled, And We’re Here For It King — Credit: Canvaa, created by author
#7: Spiral: From the Book of Saw
Chris Rock as Detective Zeke Banks in Spiral — Credit: Lionsgate
A provocative failed reboot. When this came out, everybody said it stunk, and compared to the average Chris Rock or Samuel L. Jackson movie, it stinks. But compared to Saw movies? It’s mid.
Chris Rock pretends to be an angry cop, yells every line, and does standup bits about divorce while investigating grizzly crime scenes. Samuel L. Jackson plays his dad and gets a hilarious fake mustache! Ultimately, they try to make a big political statement about police shootings, string up Jackson in this wacky cyborg trap, and reveal one of the funniest traps in the series. Critical dramatic moments come through braindead dialogue like “Fuck me? No. Fuck you!”
It’s missing two crucial Saw tropes. There’s no Tobin Bell, so I had to subtract a point. There are also no confusing continuity explanations, and the plot is miserably boring with a telegraphed twist. Nevertheless, the traps are high-budget, and genuine celebrities are getting tortured!
Best Death/Trap? The cop who must cut out his tongue or get hit by a subway train. That must hurt!
Spiral Tried So Hard But Didn’t Get Far Because, In The End, They Kept The Franchise Canon — Credit: Canvaa, created by author
#8: Jigsaw
The Bucket Room Trap in Jigsaw— Credit: Lionsgate
The boring reboot. More flashbacks, more cops, more complicated mythos. Saw II had a house, and Jigsaw had a barn. John was sneaking off on the weekends to convert a farm into a torture factory to teach people lessons. A decade after his death, it started killing people. Is it the real guy!? No, it’s the cops that Jigsaw trained, which isn’t surprising because that’s who it is in every movie. This one is confusing. The traps are barn-themed, and the kills. There isn’t a twist.
Best Death/Trap? The Grain Silo Trap. Two people fall into a grain silo, and they will die by corn, drowning in corn. A different guy doesn’t chop his leg up with a lever and some jagged blades.
Jigsaw Was The Reboot That Didn’t, In A Barn — Credit: Canvaa, created by author
#9: Saw V
Scott Patterson as Peter Strahm — Credit: Lionsgate
Jigsaw grooms a cop and tortures real estate developers. Directed by the franchise’s production designer, David Hackl, I thought the traps were evocative of the Iraqi invasion and Abu Grave: hand-crushing boxes, waterboarding, decapitations, nails and glass used for improvised explosive devices, and jumper cable electrocution. The plot is horrible. Not enough, Tobin. It’s a lousy cop procedural about two cops who look too much alike, so it’s hard to tell them apart. The beginning is also the ending of III and IV, I guess? This one has the lowest kill count since the first movie. Thus, it’s boring.
Best Death & Trap: Ten Pints of Sacrifice. Two people must fill ten pints of blood by touching a circular saw, or IEDs would blow up right next to them and impale them with nails.
Saw V Isn’t Good, But Its Cool Political Allegory Traps Saved It From Last Place — Credit: Canvaa, created by author
#10: Saw III
Dina Meyer as Allison Carry in Saw III — Credit: Lionsgate
Saw III has the same structure as Saw II without the good traps, silly story, or humor. Instead, it has vague Christian undertones and a chain-filled sadomasochistic relationship between Jigsaw John and Amanda. A lot of fans like this one, but I hate it. The kills are very gory and have a severe and depressing vibe — graphic imagery like a brain tumor extraction or Donnie Wahlberg smashing his ankle with a toilet lid adds to this. Few games get played. Mostly, they just mess with a sad guy whose son died. We see Amanda set up traps in the first two movies. Plus, Amanda’s games suck. The people playing can’t escape by ripping their ears off or whatever. The last twist is stupid and gets retconned away. In a franchise known for being often ridiculous, confusing, disgusting, and dull, this one is the best example of the franchise’s flaws.
Best Death/Trap? While the traps in Jeff’s trial are interesting (the scary freezer, the vat of pig carcasses, the crucifix), the games aren’t much fun because the victim can’t escape. I suppose the Angel Trap is best because it’s insane, metal angel wings and robot arms that rip a cop’s ribcage apart if she doesn’t dunk her hand in a vat of acid. Confusing, senseless, gory, somewhat funny?
Boring And Sad, Saw III And Its Daddy Issues Come In Last Place — Credit: Canvaa, created by author
Live or Die?
Death is a reason to reflect, and in the Saw franchise, there are 101 deaths and 115 traps, so that’s a lot of reflection and a low survival rate.
Why do these movies exist? Like many media created in the 2000s, the Saw franchise is stupid, offensive, reactionary, rude, silly, intensely violent, and bizarre. Like a gore video, your friend showed you how to make you throw up. Twenty years ago, I watched Saw at a sleepover, and then a year later, we snuck into Saw II. We screamed and squirmed at the simulated torture.
Twenty years later, Saw X is as good as any of the other sequels.
And me? I’m still wondering what I would do if I woke up naked, chained in a dirty bathroom, with a key in my intestine, or something insane.
A star-studded Hollywood biopic put the Gamestop Stock Short Squeeze back in the news. Two books were published about Gamestop mania, soI read both books, and this post considers their viewpoint, accuracy, and historical rigor. Can we finally evaluate the 2021 Stonks Squeeze? P.S. This book review is financial advice. Do as I say, or your money gets hurt.
The Antisocial Network (2021) by Ben Mezrich
Should you see Dumb Money, the movie? Probably. It looks funny, it’s full of stars, and Paul Dano pretends to be Keith Gill.
Should you read the book Dumb Money, first published as The Antisocial Network (2001)? No. It’s a conventional retelling of what happened with GME that sides with “the Reddit masses” but doesn’t go deep enough to figure out who scammed money off those masses. Dumb Money oversimplifies the story, condenses the timeline, and covers the same ground as Wikipedia articles about the GME Squeeze. It was churned out quickly and seems designed for a movie adaptation.
The book does a good job of making stocks exciting, cross-cutting Wall Street, Main Street, and Keith Gill, a.k.a. DeepFuckingValue, a.k.a. RoaringKitty. Yet the narrative is uncritical of the story’s major players. We learn a lot about Gill’s running aspirations and his plan to buy his hometown an indoor track; we don’t learn about Gill’s history as an accredited broker for the life insurance company MassMutual, his experience at a fin-tech startup, or his stint at a legal case crowdfund program, LexShares. There’s no investigation into why Gill left his job and decided to risk his own money.
Gill’s MassMutual headshot compared to his meme-man headshot
I find it strange that these details were omitted. Gill was a finance professional. His GME analysis was aimed at other finance professionals to invest their money in an undervalued equity. Two rich investors, Ryan Coen and Michael Burry, came to similar conclusions. Perhaps they even read his analysis and invested in the stock. Describing Gill as a plucky retail investor is technically true, but relatively few retail investors run rigorous earning report analyses or spend $54,000 on one trade.
As the squeeze gets going, the book conflates retail investing to internet trend investors, citing the memes and the sea shanties to pretend degenerate Reddit gamblers are typical retail traders. Stock obsessives are outliers. Typical retail investors have 401K contributions that they set and forget. Arguably, they do not benefit from manufactured meme volatility.
The book’s cited example of the single-mom nurse that follows meme stocks seems like another outlier over-analyzed to seem significant. Sure, some Redditors went from r/theDonald to r/Wallstreetbets and fancied themselves amateur investors. But I’d wager that pre-2021 Wall Street Bets had a higher percentage of finance professionals than other Reddit boards, as it’s a chat room for people who spend their days trading stocks. To his credit, Mezrich does stress the distinction that apes are typical retail traders at the end of the book during the Congressional hearing, and admittedly, the book grasps this nuance better than many elected Congress members.
The strangest part of the book is the section about Elon Musk. A cheeky sci-fi fan fiction story about the billionaire, describing Musk’s underground space base where he eats aliens he caught on Mars. I think this voice would be cute for a novelty book from Urban Outfitters, but it was jarring in a nonfiction book about a major financial event. It misrepresents Musk’s role in the Meme Stonk saga and re-entertains Musk’s tiresome narrative that he’s some superhero evil genius. It’s Elon PR. In fact, Musk’s tweets about stocks have been the subject of SEC litigation in 2018 as well as in 2022 when he purchased Twitter. Shifting to a fan-fiction retelling of Musk avoids detailing Musk’s culpability of getting retail traders to make risky bets.
This book seems written to make the internet happy and nobody mad, especially not any billionaires. It gives a TL;DR analysis of the event in broad outlines but little of the why or how this happened. This book is only for true GME obsessives. Thankfully, there’s a better book.
The Revolution That Wasn’t (2022) by Spencer Jakab
Spencer Jakab, a Wall Street Journal reporter, provides a clearer explanation of the Gamestock phenomena. His book surveys a larger timeframe, more sources and provides a deeper analysis to explain the financial machinations that caused the GME squeezes.
His thesis is clear and depressing. Wall Street investment firms made more money from GME than retail traders did, and everything worked as planned. The whole scenario was capitalized on as a ploy billionaires used to get dumb money into the market. Jakab writes, “If something stirs up the retail crowd, it’s almost always good for the industry as a whole.” He quotes Wolf on Wall Street Jordan Belfort for emphasis.
“I think what the average investor doesn’t understand is that Wall Street likes volatility, they make money on volatility, on volume, up or down. It’s nice to have a bull market but when volume dries up and there’s no activity, that’s when Wallstreet suffers most.”
— Jordan Belfort, the Wolf on Wall Street
Jakab argues that GME was a consequence of reckless gambling encouraged by investment banks, clearing houses, and especially gamified brokers like Robinhood. Financial trends precipitated the GME’s squeezes, and the author argues if these things hadn’t happened, the video game pawnshop would not have enticed the world into buying its worthless stock. Trends like…
ZIRP (Zero Interest Rate Percentage)
Ubiquitous smartphones
Commission free trading
Payment for Order Flow
SPACs, OTC, and Crypto trading (unregulated assets)
The 2020 COVID flash crash
“Donny Pumps” or Donald Trump’s immediate business bailout and money printing
If the government wasn’t printing money to keep the stock market afloat, and if Wall Street hadn’t spent the previous decade making it easier for anyone to place bets on stocks, we wouldn’t have seen this short squeeze.
Jakab also points the blame at rich influencers who really made money from the 2021 Meme Stocks.
Like Ryan Coen, the Chewy.com CEO who became a billionaire from his GME trades. Today, he’s under SEC investigation for telling retail investors to buy Bed Bath & Beyond as the company headed to bankruptcy.
Dave Portnoy, a spokesperson for the online gambling industry, made big bets on meme stocks for clout. He lost, but he profits from an environment of stupid retail traders. This is the guy who picked stocks to rally from a Scrabble bag. His BUZZ ETF tracks popular stocks, and it’s down 30% from ATH (on 9/15/23). Whether ETF commissions or gambling app referrals, the man always tries to score points on the vig.
When Robinhood filed for its IPO, it revealed 2021 was massively profitable and saw the creation of thousands of new accounts. Ken Griffin, CEO of Citadel Securities, ended 2021 as the world’s 37th richest person. Options sellers reported the largest profits in history, as did investment banks like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.
The evidence is overwhelming: retail did not win on the GME short squeeze. Only a small minority of people made money. Nobody stuck it to the hedgies, the market functioned as designed, and Wall Street won from meme stock mania.
Future Market Predictions
Did the market makers collude on 1/21/21 to screw over retail traders when Robinhood stopped selling Gamestop shares? Not exactly. Both books agree that financiers and lawmakers collude to screw retail traders as much as the law allows (a lot). But halting buy orders on Robinhood is not illegal nor irrational for the broker. Both books agree that Robinhood has the legal right to reject buy orders on a volatile equity if they can’t afford to fulfill the order. It’s like a store without inventory; buyers are free to go to another brokerage and buy it.
Jakab cogently argues Robinhood screwed retail way before 1/21/2021 by using Pavlovian conditioning to gamify stock trading and get their users addicted to dopamine hits from options gambling. This trend makes more money than the blip any market professionals “lost” on covering Gamestop shares.
Since publication, the Reddit board r/GME_Meltdown shows the consequences of meme stocks. The men who bought GME, BBBY, AMC, and other meme stocks seem like people trapped in cults, multi-level marketing schemes. Insisting the stocks of bankrupt companies will go up seems no different than having nutritional supplement powders in your garage. It’s hard to know who’s telling the truth on message boards, but posters have reported losing their entire savings, their jobs, homes, and families. Did these men win by getting the opportunity to invest recklessly?
“We should stop pretending that’s what’s going on is investing,” said Benjamin Edwards, a professor at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas who has studied securities law. “It’s just gambling.”
— Wall Street Journal
So what does this mean for the future? I predict more of the same. More market shenanigans that benefit a few thousand people who work in the FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) industry at the expense of billions of people who don’t. More ways to trick know-nothings into feeling confident enough to waste their money on complex financial instruments. The Gamestop Stock Shorting Scandal of 2021 is the perfect example of how inefficient markets are at running an economy. GME reinforced the truth that markets are designed to enrich the few while impoverishing many.
This life hack is just for men because I’m suggesting they try wearing a purse like me. Women won’t get much mileage from this hack cuz culture conditions them to wear purses and carry a fun little bag around with all their stuff in it. Men, now is the time for us to do this too.
My girlfriend got a cross-body bag and seemed a lot happier. She could leave the house faster without worrying about forgetting her stuff. She got a leopard print, but I thought that looked a little too sexy, so I got the green one.
Why A Cross-Body Bag?
Why not? There are at least seven advantages.
It’s less heavy and bulky than a backpack
You can put all your stuff in it.
It’s got zippers, so you won’t lose anything.
Your pants will look cooler and less lumpy.
Your butt won’t hurt from sitting on your phone all weird.
You can organize your stuff easier.
It’s like always having a big jacket.
But Why Cross Body Bags Now?
I’m writing about them. You’re reading about them. A guy at the mall asked me where I got mine, and I saw another guy on my street with the same one I had. Remember, I live in Los Angeles, so I innately know what’s trending!
The time is now, men. Well, technically, the time is summer, so depending on your hemisphere, the time is either now or very soon.
But Is Wearing A Cross-Body Bag Ethically Responsible?
I’m not sure.
– Nicky Website
But there is one thing that I know. Climate change is coming, and scientists agree that the world is heating up. Did I mention I live in Los Angeles? It’s warm here, and almost always uncomfortable to wear a jacket.
But I need extra pocket real estate to carry all my cool stuff around. That’s why I wear the purse, and I don’t care who judges me, except nobody judges me. Honestly, some days, it feels like everybody doesn’t even notice I exist.
Cross-body bags have also simplified my life. You could wear it at your side. It’s not a messenger bag, but you can wear it like one.
The new capacity freed me from one of my anxieties, and now I only have ten thousand left. When I leave the house, I always check for The Holy Trinity: the phone, the wallet, the keys. “Phone, wallet, keys” is my mantra, my ward of protection against being locked out, unable to buy stuff, or worse, unable to check my sites.
Thanks to the cross-body bag, I just put all that crap in the bag, and I only need to remember one thing, “Bag,” and usually, my phone is in my hands anyway because of my super sweet addiction.
MTV’s My Super Sweet Addiction (Why did I spend 20 mins making this in Canva?)
What Should I Put In A Cross-Body Bag?
In YOUR cross-body bag, you can carry items like:
Phone
Wallet
Keys
Notebook
Headphones
Yo-yo
Sunscreen
Fragrances and deodorants
Gum
Gameboy
Drugs & paraphernalia (pending municipal code)
Weapons (pending municipal code)
What’s the downside?
Q: So what’s the catch? Does the bag hurt? Does it cause back pain? Is it illegal?
A: No.
The tragic downside is you could forget the bag someplace, and then you’re screwed. All your stuff was in there. Without that stuff, you won’t even be able to buy another bag to replace the first. Without ID, you’ll be thrust into a quagmire of bureaucracy, your life a Kafkaesque nightmare, cursing the little man on Medium who told you to start wearing a purse.
But Fear Not, Fellas, Because I Have A Lifehack Within A Lifehack To Make Sure You Don’t Lose Your Purse
The operative word in Cross Body Bag is body.
Simply never take the bag off your body until you are back in your house because no matter where you go, you cannot forget your body. That’s physically impossible.
– Nicky website
Another downside is they’re fifty bucks, which seems kinda high. It’s a lot less fabric than a backpack. And yet, backpacks are more expensive than ever nowadays, thanks to inflation, which is a topic out of the scope of this article.
What Can’t You Carry In A Cross-Body Bag?
You can’t fit a laptop in it, but you could carry a dumb computer you can’t do anything on like this one.
Finally, a computer with the power of a modern phone and the design of a Nokia NGAGE
You can’t carry groceries in your cross-body bag unless you just get one grocery. So grocery, no groceries.
You can’t carry wet stuff in the bag, but come on, why would you want to do that? Put sopping wet stuff in your bag with all your important things in it. Really? Use your head.
Where Do I Buy One?
I got mine from Baggu. No affiliate link, so I don’t care where you buy one. I saw Vans makes one now. I suppose you could get a fanny pack or a tiny backpack and just strap it up differently.
Baggu, pronounced like how Wacko the Animanic said “Dadoo”
Listen, here in Los Angeles, we have a saying, “You can’t buy happiness, but you can buy a cross-body bag.”
So buy one. You’re a man, not a child. You read lifehack advice on Medium.com. You can find a bag you like and put your stuff inside it.
Why Did You Write This?
To spread knowledge and joy. I am free from the constraints of tiny pockets. I can carry a notebook, a couple of pens, extra headphones, whatever. I am a Marsupial Man.
Me fr tho
Next Steps
If you liked this post, put everything you own into bags and connect the bags to your body.
Originally published on the author’s Medium account. Images cited are for educational purposes and not for profit.
The Last Days of New Paris is China Miéville’s novella about a surrealist Paris magically overlapping with our realist Paris. At the back of the book, Miéville offers endnote citations of the surrealist art that inspired his writing. I corralled all the art in this post.
**Spoilers, perhaps? Although contextless art might entice unconvinced readers to read the novella!**
4 “It’s the Vélo!” –
“I am an Amateur of Velocipedes” by Leonora Carrington (1941)
7 As everyone gathered watched the black virtue
“La Vertu noire” by Roberto Matta (1943)
9 There are worse things than garden airplane traps:
“Garden Airplane Trap” by Max Ernst (1935)
9 Flocks of bat-winged businessmen and ladies:
“Une semaine de bonté” by Max Ernst 1934related image by Max Ernst — please comment with title
9 mono- and bi- and triplane gemoetries
“Le Drapeau noir” by René Magritte (1937)
11 Huge sunflowers root all over
“Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” by Dorothea Tanning (1943)
11 up-thrust snakes that are their stems
“Lovers’ Flower” by Léona Delacourt [Nadja] (192?)
15 an impossible composite of tower and human…a pair of women’s high-heeled feet
an untitled exquisite corpse by André Breton, Man Ray, Max Morise, Yves Tanguy (1927)
16 enervation infecting house after house
Miéville’s explains Céline’s mantif of enervation; the text says “the Nazis sought to create…a Céline weltgeist” here’s Wikipedia’s Hegelian definition,
“Weltgeist(“world spirit”) is not an actual object or a transcendental, Godlike thing, but a means of philosophizing about history.”
16 Enigmarelle, foppish robot staggered out of an exhibition guide
“Winged Folgore” by Guglielmo Sansoni [Tato] (1933)“Fiat CR32 in Stunt — Flying over a Workshop”, by Guglielmo Sansoni [Tato] (1932)“Il Duce” by Gerardo Dottori (1933)
51 “Fauves…The negligible old star?”
This is Gertrude Stein’s poem, “Negligible Old Star”
NEGLIGIBLE old star. Pour even. It was a sad per cent. Does on sun day. Watch or water. So soon a moon or a old heavy press.
54 a giant’s pissoir
The Arc de Triomphe from Wikipedia
See note 61 for “irrational embellishments”
55 a great sickle-headed fish…a woman made up of outsized pebbles
“Woman and Bird” by Wilfredo Lam (1963)“Stone Woman” by Meret Oppenheim (1938)
56 the Palais Garnier, its stairs dinosaur bones
A photo of the Palais Garnier, Wikipedia
See note 61 for “irrational embellishments”
56 Le Chabanais
Photo of Le Chabanais exteriorPhoto of Le Chabanais interior
See note 61 for “irrational embellishments”
56 A vegetal puppet, stringy, composite floral thing
“Cave to Canvas: Vegetal Puppets” by Remedios Varo (1938)
56 Celebes
“The Elephant Celebes” by Max Ernst (1921)
57 The sun over Paris isn’t an empty-hearted ring
“The Grey Forest” by Max Ernst (1920)“The Large Forest” by Max Ernst (1920)
58 smoke figures wafting in and out of presence
“Grand Fumage” by Wolfgang Paalen (1930s)
Not sure on this painting’s title or date.
59 “The horse head.”
“Do You Know My Aunt Eliza?” by Leonora Carrington (1941)
71 Thibaut had fought the Carlingue once, alongside Laurence Iché
Laurence Iché’s poem, I Prefer Your Uneasiness Like a Dark Lantern, taken from the book, Surrealist Women.
I prefer your uneasiness like a dark lantern without ever knowing that phantom goes through me when the lamp of battles burns all its thirst Only the leaf on a final point of life will run into the hoop of knowledge The eagle-headed caterpillar the wind-haired eagle are engulfed by the bath of shredded mirrors with nostalgic seals of lips and glances that collide Those are the shredded mirrors that reptiles inhabit for the smiles of the wind steal all the velvets of forgetfulness with the same avidity that windows steal landscapes underneath lines drawn from the sun Like the meteor trail of a hope they embraced the nervous spurt of printer’s blood the cavalcade of inextricable branches of chance in the ballet of days that shelter you immobility cooked into table legs and catacombs of the past in the shadow of the present to make of me a drying umbrella
Translated from French by Myrna Bell Rochester
“La Déchirée” by René Iché (1940)
74 Sacré-Cœur
Photo of The Sacré-Cœur
See 61 on “irrational embellishments”
75 a ladder of sinewy muscled arms
“Les Batisseurs de ruins” by Tita? (1941)
Thanks to George Trosper on this one.
77 A huge featureless mantif woman holed by drawers…dolls crawling crablike
“The Burning Giraffe” by Salvador Dalí (1937)“The Doll” by Hans Bellmer (1936)
77 “My pajamas balsam hammer gilt with azure.”
Simone Yoyotte’s poem “Pyjama-Speed”
My pyjamas gilt with azure and Bois-Colombes Tranquil atmospheres — and dance The pavane of silence and Jew. — I am moved — so be it — but no and if I departed softly and the river country of my self lightly and I smile. — My pyjamas gilt and embroidered with myself (spear) and worst of all gilt with azure my pyjamas balsam hammer gilt with azure so-called Bois Colombes and Jew and you’ve made it.
Translated from French by Myrna Bell Rochester
88 Trapped in their Marseille hinterland…the Surrealists had drawn new suits, a cartographic rebellion
127 tiny exquisite corpses ripped into their components by machines
“Nude” by Yves Tanguy, Joan Miró, Max Morise, and Man Ray, (1926–1927)“Exquisite corpse.” by Max Morise, Joan Miró, Yves Tanguy, Man Ray. (1927)“Exquisite corpse.” by Max Morise, Joan Miró, Yves Tanguy, Man Ray. (1927)
162 “It’s a self-portrait.” … “Of Adolf Hitler.”
“A. Hitler” by Adolf Hitler (1910)
That’s it! There’s a few missing notes, so let me know if you find them. Feel free to share this with Miéville and surrealism fans far and wide.
