Newsletter.022-Mar2022

Now

I think this is supposed to be some sort of record of all the amazing things I’ve been doing lately and how all these super amazing product experiments are going. I’m pretty sure that this how things should be going if I was doing this correctly, but I’m not so you, Dear Reader, won’t have to read this shit here I promise you.

This is also the bit where you will not read about how you have to pay for a subscription. This is free damnit. Free. Free. Free. Free like a bird. Free like your soul should be if the machinations of modern life weren’t pulverising any last shred of hope and humanity your withered husk of a body might have. Free like a newspaper blowing down a London street.

Subscribe or Unsubscribe. You decide.

Top 10

• The Norwegian artist Jan Hakon Erichsen makes art that is generally perfomative and a large amount of which involve some sort of large, wooden contraption for trying to eat bananas in very difficult ways.
• Hotel stays someone else pays for – So imagine a world where you don’t go on a website and rent a flat that is essentially an Ikea showroom and where you not only have to make your own damn breakfast but the bed as well. Now imagine the opposite where you are alone in contrived luxury and where the centrepiece is a massive, fuck-off large screen TV and you not only don’t have to listen to the people you ordinarily live with but can just throw shit around and someone else replaces it with new ones when you’re not there AND you don’t even have to book it yourself.
• NPR

Read the rest here

Three Things

…with the Meaning of 80’s Songs I’ve had Stuck In My Head

I’ve had the Tina Turner song “Simply the Best” stuck in my head for days at this point. It’s there, right when I get up and go to the toilet until at least the bit where I get around to making a coffee.

Possible scenarios:

1. Tina is speaking to me. She knew then as she knows now that a guy just needs a bit of a boost to a sagging ego now and again.
2. The Universe is just and good and here is categorical proof which then justifies your time reading this newsletter. The Universe is telling You, Dear Reader, that you’re simply the best through the medium of me.
3. An unconscious memory of me singing this song as a kid manifests itself in my middle age, awakened by the prospect of pissing away more of what little time I have on earth to more unpaid and largely pointless creative endeavours.

Quote of the month

“I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.”

(Kurt Vonnegut)

The Day Man Lost

So imagine, if you will, a conference. But it’s not the conference that I just asked you to imagine. It’s about a million times better. Sure, you have a badge of sorts, and there are a bunch of people in some location where they sit in rows on folding chairs in some shape of auditorium and listen to someone talk at them about what are supposed to be interesting things. Sure it’s that, but way better, because it’s super rock and roll and it was the brainchild of yours truly, world renowned artist Campbell Orme and at least 12 pints.

The Day Man Lost was the conference that was stillborn to a world not ready for it. There were to be awesome speakers like Barney Greenway (Napalm Death) Storm Thorgenson (album cover designer for Pink Floyd, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin), a bunch of special effects artists because it’s awesome and because explosions and a ton of others who we knew third or fourth hand but could totally get there. I’m pretty sure there was a Google Doc and plans for pyrotechnics and Jäegermeister sponsorship. But this isn’t what made it. What made it was of course this wicked logo.

The Jim Kosem Short Story Explosion

The Worst Superpower

If you were wondering what it would be like to have a superpower that doesn’t help anyone and is largely pointless, or you have 56 seconds to kill, you should obviously be reading the short fiction (flash fiction? I’m not sure) The Worst Superpower.

Super Serious Forwards

7 Swedish Words to Import

If you’re into insane archeo-linguistic analysis of Sumerian jokes that are at least 4000 years old, this thread is for you.

AI facial recognition and a pile of Python to detect in live streams of Flemish government which politicians are on their phones

Halfman endorses

Hot showers

There are a lot of missives floating about the internets, rife with pleas and prods to take cold showers. It’s alleged (and proved with links to other parts of the internet which means it’s totally a thing) through this self flagellation one endures that afterwards one enjoys all sorts of health benefits ranging from reduced anxiety to weight loss to forgiveness of sins. I’m looking at you internet faux Stoics and calling bullshit on your passive income and California lifestyles. It’s fucking -1C here in Central Europe and if wanted to be cold so some Dutch guy can sell more books and self help courses, I would just go outside. Which I have to in a little bit anyhow. Being cold is generally uncomfortable, this is why jackets and heating exist, and I for one and you Dear Reader as well don’t need anymore discomfort or guilt for what little creature comforts we may enjoy in our short lives. So there.

Ends

Thanks for sticking around.

Ride.
Shoot straight.
Speak the truth.

– Jim