I’m Jeremiah. I’m a middle-aged white man in America, so that means I’m over-represented in the media and in the workforce. I’m also a pretty good writer. You can find out a lot about me in this journal, going all the way back to 2005.
For example, my day-to-day life is normal but interesting. What I consider my best slices of life are here, though sometimes things happen that are beyond insane. Speaking of insane, I’m bipolar and have ADD, and these things are so deep a part of me that I have to spend a lot of time making sense of it. I sometimes find myself thinking about the past, and I get a little nostalgic, sometimes sad, but I think about my friends and things are (usually) okay. I’m deeply steeped in pop culture, and I have some pretty serious opinions, though you’d never know that by talking to me. As I said, I write, and I reflect on my unusual process as well as my successes and failures at it quite a bit.
Basically, I like to write little essays that aren’t, with one or two exceptions, too long, and these are hundreds of them. Stop on by, take a look around, tell me what you think.
You might know from reading my posts that I’ve been on vacation over Thanksgiving, and I got the suburbs of New York from the suburban side. Joining me on my trip was Owlman.
We mostly chilled out.
Pictured: Chilling out:
There were foes to be taken down.
Oh, my gourd!
Look at this mess!
“Let’s get out of here, chum.”
He’s even putting together a band.
A one-man band.
Our host is an accomplished photographer, and he won awards for his Lego Star Wars portraits.
Owlman got to know the studio mannequin:
How many times to I have to tell you, Owlman, you can’t touch the equipment!
But all good things must come to an end, and I left for home today, refreshed and relaxed.
Thanksgiving, while my hosts were occupied, their five-year-old daughter found me, first thing when she got out of bed.
It had to do with the watercolors I had given her and her eight-year-old brother the day before, to the soundtrack of Spaceballs. He wasn’t as moved, but she taught herself how to use them because she was smart enough. Remember, she’s five. She doesn’t understand most of the words that come out of my mouth, and she has the grace, precision, and attention-span of a concussed monkey on mushrooms. She wasn’t afraid to ask for help, though.
Meanwhile, I was painting a self-portrait for my new sketchbook. She found this fascinating, not as fascinating as what she was working on, but fascinating indeed. She handed me the sheet of watercolor paper and told me to draw a picture to paint. I told her I would, first thing in the morning, and Her Majesty deemed this acceptable.
When I asked, she told me she wanted a portrait of herself and her Chihuahua, Wendy, who looks like she just drank two Red Bulls and swallowed 100 milligrams of Adderall. Before everybody else awoke, I sketched away while Owlman gave me some pointers.
She was delighted by my work, and I took a photo of it before it was defaced.
She was so excited, she scrambled all over her house to show Mommy and Daddy. Daddy was working, and Mommy was not feeling great, but they both appreciated my staggering genius.
As I prepared myself to talk her through the process, she disappeared for a few minutes, returning with a deck of Uno, a game she loved. She instructed me on the intricacies of the game, but I’m don’t think some the rules were regulation. When I won best out of three, she didn’t like Uno anymore. Next, she showed me a game called Sleeping Queens, and I’m pretty sure she cheated.
Next, she wanted to paint my picture. I critiqued and encouraged her, but she was horrified by the smear of blue paint she put there. I suggested it might be a magical portal. She added in her reaction, and maybe there should be a tree in the background, and told me she was going to write this down, followed shortly by, “Jeremiah, I can’t write. I’m five.”
I asked her what her what her favorite color was. “My favorite color is gold with sparkles. My favorite color is pink. My favorite color is purple and orange, and blue. But it has to be a dark blue.” Luckily, I have a pink pen (and I’m confident in my masculinity).
I watched as she used her delicate brushstrokes to enhance my inspired lines. (Delicate brushwork below).
She had planned on composing an intricate background, but after finishing the tree, she took me outside to play on her tree swing in her pajamas, and then hide-and-seek.
This one was challenging for me because here aren’t a lot of places for a man my size to hide. I told her this and pointed out that it took her six seconds to count to ten. Graciously, would count to thirty from then on, and she also gave me tips for places to hide, such as Rock Taco in the distance.
Rock Taco is what you might expect if you’re thinking about a rock taco. Getting on all fours, she soiled her pajamas. To hide, I would have to lay down on the mud and the decayed leaves. She took me on a sweep of the perimeter of her two-acre backyard, twice, her armed with a tree-branch sword to keep the thorns at bay.
She had explained that we would take another circuit, which I sighed and accepted. Instead, she asked me to help her gather acorns for the squirrels, then she wanted to show me her favorite climbing tree. My knees and back ached watching her perform her best tricks. “This is the easy one. It’s really hard.” Finally, we came back inside, and I went to talk to my family for the holiday, only my mic wasn’t working. When that was over, I laid down on the bed and woke up an hour later. Downstairs, she waited for me because she made me a bracelet.
Actually, she made it before I came. I love wearing bracelets, so I am honored to be wearing one of her fine pieces. We beaded for a while, but the string we were working with was too thick for most of them. Usually, that kind of frustration would make me flip the coffee table—her too—but we held it together. I think neither of us wanted to embarrass ourselves in front of the other.
After that, guests started filtering in. The group were all related to the hostess, and the whole time, I had no idea who was related to whom. This morning, I had it explained to me. The hostess’s brother was here, as was his wife and twenty-year-old attitude problem. Also there was their mother, and her sister-in-law’s mother, who was spry, charming, and witty. I thought she was my dad’s age, but she’s ninety-three!
To help out, I took the overwhelmed little girl upstairs, where she could enjoy some well-deserved screen time. The rest of the evening was spent discussing non-alcoholic beer, which I enjoyed for the first time (note: I did not say “consumed for the first time”), New Mexico, the intrusion of algorithms into our lives, Teslas and Cybertrucks, and politics. The latter was delightful because all of us agreed, as in everyone at the table had the same views.
As the weight of the off-Broadway-style food took hold, and the other guests left, desperate to get home before they lapsed into comas left.
The girl was too tired to sleep, but a soft pillow fixed that. Mommy and Daddy, who both had a tough day, settled in for the night. As for me, I barely got into my pajamas.
I got this wild hair and started fantasizing about turning my New York-adjacent adventures into an animated series, populated by some of the people who made it so memorable.
[Names withheld to protect the innocent. It helps that my likenesses are rubbish.]
Christmas, you get presents. Thanksgiving, you get to indulge yourself. Halloween is that day when you get to be someone else, and that made it my favorite. I’ve been Optimus Prime, John “Hannibal” Smith from the A-Team, and a Ghostbuster named Murphy.
The coolest Halloween experience I ever had was generic Jedi for my seventh Halloween. (“Bow, or whatever, to the adequate might of Jedi Master Temu!”) On the other side of the barrier that separated the older kids was a generic Sith, carrying a red lightsaber to match my yellow one. He came over, and we talked over the fence for a long time. about Star Wars, we talked about what the fifth grade was like, and he wanted to get a better look at my lightsaber. After recess, I never saw him again, but I looked everywhere.
Years later, I wore the world’s worst Halloween costume and drank vodka in lieu of eating something and went to a rock concert and drank a lot of beer and had another jack and coke and said something to That Moby so bad it got me thrown out of the bar and soaked my friend’s couch with vomit.
Once upon a time, when I was much thinner, I’d shave my mustache, throw on a green T-shirt and go as Norville Rogers, with the nom de guerre of Shaggy. I pulled off an amazing Crow, thanks to the incredible makeup skills of my friend M.
Last year, I enjoyed the holiday with M in Colorado, walking the neighborhood and scoping out the decorations.
I’ve been doing it solo so far this year.
For pagans like Kate, Halloween, or Samhain (pronounced SOW-win; don’t say it like it’s spelled or a witch will laugh at you), is the most sacred day of the year. It’s Christmas and Easter rolled up into one, with all the celebration and feasts and prayers. It’s when the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest, and you can commune with those that have gone before. It is here I lost the true meaning of Halloween (candy and costumes).
I had a very, very nudge-nudge, wink-wink, say no more, say no more Halloween night in the East Village while the parade went by. On my own, I liked to stop in the neighborhood for a drink and watch Bleeker Street lit up with people having a good time.
Two years ago, I was recruited for the Pumpkin Task Force at work. We wanted to kill at the First Annual Pumpkin Carving Contest, so I said, sure, I’ll help. There were five of us. I bring this up because 20 percent of the group did all the work. I designed the pumpkin:
It was based on the mascot for the American Society of Hematology, Red.
I went to the art store that knows me by name and bought acrylic pens (on the company card). And I said, “You guys do the rest.” My boss offered to carve the pumpkin if someone would draw the face based on my design, but no one did. To say I was disappointed would understate it.
Imagine my surprise when someone asked if I was helping with his year’s contest, closing in two hours. I said no, not after last time. Later, I came across the pumpkin, and someone had written “CARVED” in large letters on it. I hauled it over to the break room and attempted to hose the Sharpie off. I had brought my art markers with me, so I applied them to the pumpkin, using my old design.
It was then that Sera, a work acquaintance, swept in with tubes of acrylic paint, and I was able to work in style. She used to paint, with oils, but she moved into a smaller apartment and can’t fit her easel. While I applied cadmium red to the face, she made hands out of paper plates.
We took it to contest, where it was clear we were not going to win.
Sera and I agreed that we would be more prepared next year.
The party was loud, as parties tended to be. There was an open bar, and I had a doctor’s appointment, so I didn’t stick around.
I was there long enough to puzzle over the group of people who all knew each other, dressed in yellow shirts and overalls. but this Every one of them was wearing glasses, but that’s not that weird. It was weird that they had all had nametags. At first, I thought they were the caterers, but they were all wearing different types of yellow tops.
The only nametag I paid attention to was the cute blonde, named “Lou.” I thought Lou was the best name for a pixie woman, but I also had to remember was that this was a costume. She probably didn’t even need glasses.
Someone dressed like Wednesday, someone dressed like Janet Jackson, Rhythm Nation. There was an axolotl. There was a woman riding “a goose,” “no, an ostrich,” “maybe a swan,” “that is an ostrich,” “that is definitely a goose,” “hey, what’s that you’re riding? I told you it was an ostrich.”
I went to the work party to see me win fifth place, and they announced that the pumpkins were going to be judged in twenty-four by a panel of the building superintendent’s Instagram contacts. So I left.
Then it hit me. They were Minions. They were fucking Minions.
I’ve been writing a bonkers novel called Subterraneaus Obscura about the mysterious world underneath Washington, D.C. (which has nothing to do with politics). It’s about three adventurers wearing suits who journey their way through ratweillers, the Mongolian death worm, organic server farms, Gnome Town, etc. They are:
Ember—thrill-seeker. They discovered the underground and keeps recruiting people to explore it with them. They’re optimistic and friendly, and they can’t hold their berry beet smoothies.
Juliette—career criminal. After committing the crime of the century, she is swept up in Ember’s wake when she is almost hit by a Metro train. She’s pretty relaxed, considering.
Mazel—charmed ad absurdum. Cursed with supernaturally good luck, Mazel is on the run from her father, the wealthiest man in the world. Her good fortune gets glitchy underground, so she follows Ember to see if it will run out.
I just finished writing a bananas novel called Subterraneous Obscura, which has dozens of supporting characters, from baristas to the richest man in the world. I’ve tried to give memorable personalities to all of them, and the best way to do that is to give them names. I pluck my names out of my life, and along the way, I named seven characters after the pets who are or have been living with my friends, Steve and Meredith, my former roommate, Nicole, and myself.
Here’s Steve and Meredith’s:
Cooper (Ginger Golden Retriever): A doctor who always wanted to do theater. He thinks he’s auditioning for Little Shop of Horrors, but instead, he’s cast in a sex tape.
Harmony (Golden Retriever): The preppy herald of an underworld goddess. (RIP)
Inkling (Sleek Black Cat): The minions of an underworld goddess.
Stardust (Small Tortoiseshell): An underworld goddess. (RIP)
Next is Nicole’s baby, Henry (Black Egyptian Mau): An FBI agent used to getting his way. He’s a Momma’s boy, and his Momma is a crazed, shotgun wielding old woman.
Following is my beloved Newcastle (Maine Coon): A butler who took a vow of silence. (RIP)
Finally, my current roommate, Oscar (Fluffy Black Cat): A sleazy teenage data broker.
I spent a lot of Friday making arrangements should I not come home Saturday afternoon. Ordinarily, that would be my emergency contact, Sophia, but she was my copilot yesterday. We were going to the No Kings Rally in front of the Capitol building, and I was pretty sure I was getting arrested.
The president and his consigliores had labeled this event as un-American. Despite his having been proved a liar repeatedly, people believed him. He is most definitely in the Epstein files, but everyone is giving him the benefit of the doubt. He brought troops into my city to use as a springboard to threaten his enemies in Democratic-leaning states, and people still think he’s trustworthy. He was certain to make an example out of us, so why not here?
The fascist takeover of our country has left me hopeless and alone. I have no reason to feel alone. Almost everyone I know agrees with me. But the media is, at best, wishy-washy when it comes to the anti-ethics of the Republican Party. The Democratic Party is not siding with No Kings because they don’t want to look soft on crime. Millions of citizens are angry and afraid, and no one is coming to help us.
I believed I was going to be arrested or worse at this rally, but I had to go. I had to be seen. Even if I was seen fleeing the scene while being chased down by tear gas. And I wasn’t going to let Sophia go alone.
The rally started at noon, but I had a dental appointment I was late to because of Metro fuckery. My trip there and to the meet-up point was jam-packed with people carrying signs. I spent the trip reading the ALCU’s Instagram post advising what to do in the case of a detainment or arrest.
I met Sophia, and we walked to the entrance point. She seemed determined, but I was tense. If we turned a corner and saw a pillar of smoke, I was going home. If I heard gunfire, I was going home.
What we saw as we got closer, turned out to be families and couples leaving our destination, looking chill. As we moved on, folks sat in camping chairs, some decorated in yellow balloons, and directed traffic. One such person was in a blow-up shark costume.
I said, “I’m not scared anymore.”
She snorted. “You were scared?”
“I didn’t want to get arrested.”
“Please,” she huffed, “like I’d go to a place where I would be arrested.”
The rally, like those leaving it, was chill. It wasn’t too crowded, and everyone was polite. There were vendors there, and they only took cash or Venmo. We bought a couple of big flags to wave around because I forgot our signs. Some people were selling water, but most people were giving it away.
At one point, I thought I was seeing a fight break out in the middle of a thick crowd, but it was actually a friendly dance battle.
Sophia and I pushed forward, until we were near the front. The police on the other side of the barriers looked really bored, except for the snipers on top of the East Building of the National Gallery of Art.
Inching forward, Sophia brought us to a halt and said, “Let’s just wait here and people-watch!”
“People-watching is one of my favorite things to do,” I told her as if she didn’t know that about me.
I love to be around interesting people, and this rally was full of them. Some people dressed like Founding Fathers. Some people blew bubbles. Some people carried signs on pizza boxes. Other people had professional signs. One person had a painting of Donald Trump violating Lady Liberty with his hand. Sophia and I agreed that this wasn’t helping.
There were either four people wearing blow-up unicorn costumes, or the same person was moving place to place really fast. There were axolotls, sharks, and dinosaurs. Frogs were also popular, and someone explained to someone else while I listened, the frog mascot was seen at a Portland rally, making the cops look ridiculous. Also it was reclaiming the frog motif from Pepe.
A guy on an intercom announced something, but I couldn’t make out the words.
Sophia asked, “Did he just say Bernie?”
The voice from somewhere nearby said, “Thank you, I’m proud to be here.”
And I shouted, “Bernie! Woooooo!” I was elated. I felt seen, even though I couldn’t see where he was. He declared war on Trump, and he told us what we were going to do after the midterms, but I am not so hopeful.
Sophia and I left shortly afterward. I found out we were there for two hours, and I thought we were there an hour, tops. In addition, what I thought was a fifteen-minute speech from Bernie was actually over thirty minutes.
I’m not sure how I’d describe that rally. It reminded me of Speedway, Indiana during the Indy 500—just souvenirs and crowds of likeminded people, some in costume, celebrating. In DC yesterday, we celebrated our unity. Tidal waves of people flowed through our large cities.
I don’t know how the news is going to report it. I can’t think about that. I witnessed an electrifying politician voice his support for the Americans who are getting squeezed dry and criminalized. It was exactly what I needed to hear.
Since I can’t work backstage at shows anymore (last time I tried, I had to take a week off of work because of a manic episode), I volunteered some art for the community theater. For their show Puffs. Two qualifiers:
After I sent the art to the director, I haven’t heard a word back. I don’t know if they’re using it or not.
The subject-matter is problematic, I’m well aware. The good news is, Puffs is a parody, and it walks up to the line of copyright violation, but doesn’t cross it. There’s nothing that miserable c-word can do about it, and all the money this play makes is going to the authors.
Because the play is about the house the Sorting Hat would send me to, and because this play is stealing money from JK Rowling, I take pride in my work.
If you know me, you’ll know I don’t have much self-esteem. Even now, at fifty, with less fucks to give than ever before, I worry. I’ve never thought I was attractive, I’ve never thought I was interesting. Sometimes, though, I think I’m the greatest.
Once upon a time, someone—I suspect Evil Col, the editor-in-chief for The New York Post—threw a birthday party for Evil Col, the editor-in-chief for The New York Post. I arrived early because I arrived early for everything, and I found myself alone at the bar, waiting for someone I might recognize.
That someone was my office crush, Gretchen* who happened to be the most irritating person I’ve ever met in my life. We had interacted in the past, but not substantially, and I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t recognize me if she ever saw me again.
That evening, she made me smell her hair, punched my arm affectionately, and ordered chicken wings that she performed unspeakable acts upon with her tongue and lips. While all of this was going on, an editor named Colin, Good Col, put everybody’s drinks on his card, promoting him to Great Col.
This was not when I felt like I was the greatest. Later, after my crush wandered off (I saw her the next day, and she had no idea who I was), I found my fellow copyeditor, Mike. We hung out for a minute, but he was itching to talk to someone more cooler. Before he left me alone, She swooped in.
I couldn’t see the color of her skin in the party lights, but she had the features of the Mediterranean. She seemed older than I, on the spectrum between skinny and curvy. She wore her dark hair up and an off-the-shoulder sweater, revealing an uninterrupted curve down her neck, as well as and her enticing collarbones.
Her name was Daniela.
I assumed she was there for Mike, who was better looking and more charming than I, but she kept turning to me for my opinions, or returning tangents to me. She was smart, but not high academia. She was well-read, and she appreciated Shakespeare.
At some point, Mike left, and it was just her and I. I don’t remember much about our conversation, just that she let me do all the talking while she sipped her white wine. She also laughed a lot, sometimes while touching me. Upon reflection, I think she was flirting with me.
We hit a wall of silence, and she drifted away. I didn’t know anything about her. Mike didn’t know her. She may have been a regular patron at the bar Evil Col’s mysterious benefactor had booked. If she was with The Post, the odds of her working on Sunday nights were slim to none. She was gone forever.
She struck me as someone who liked to meet people. Whether she held onto them longer than that, I’ll never know. She may have decided at the end of our conversation that I wasn’t worth the effort. Maybe she tried to find me later, but I had already gone home. I just know that, for half an hour, forty-five minutes, this divine, older women thought I was the most fascinating thing in a crowded bar.
Twenty years ago, Kate and I attended an opening-night screening of a movie called Serenity, based on a short-lived show nobody saw. Imagine our surprise when we saw the line.
People were in costume, and there were a lot of hideous orange pom-pom hats out there. One fan created her own steampunk look, not based on a specific character. She stood on her seat (which had probably lived through a lot at this point) and led a sing-along to the show’s theme song.
I’ve been to a lot of conventions since then, and I haven’t seen the kind of energy from that movie theater. Cut to years later.
Welcome to Night Vale was a huge hit while I was in Doha. I discovered it through some fan-art on Tumblr at the same time everybody else did. It made lists of cool and underappreciated entertainments in a lot of news sources.
It was enough to make me check it out. Starting from the beginning, the first thing you hear is a long announcement not to go into the new dog park. You are told not to approach the dog park and to ignore any hooded figures inside.
Welcome to Night Vale is a local radio show, hosted by the honey-voiced Cecil Palmer, played by Cecil Baldwin. He says something profound and/or spooky, and then “Welcome to Night Vale!” He reads the news, the community calendar, the ads, the horoscopes, traffic, and so on. Everything he reads has a twist of the paranoid and supernatural, as well as just plain ordinary.
Helicopters circle overhead because the government is watching everything you do. The producers of the Night Vale community radio station are insectoid creatures. I lost count of how many gods they had to make sacrifices to.
It is one of the cheeriest and uplifting shows I’ve ever enjoyed, soothing with its formula. I followed religiously for years, but sometime after I moved to DC, I stopped listening. Some of it was because I didn’t have the time, but some of it was because the formula was working against it. The quality of the writing wasn’t going down, but the juxtaposition of mundane life with cosmic horror didn’t feel as fresh as it used to.
They added new characters to keep things alive, such as Tamika Flynn, who once spent an entire night in the library, being stalked by those foul, insidious librarians, and Deb, the sentient cloud. They’re great, and the actors are great. They even got nerd favorite, Wil Wheaton to voice one. Along with storylines that stretched over much of the seasons, it was getting too complicated.
I saw the ad and debated going for a while. I thought I’d give myself something to look forward to on September 11, so I bought my tickets, took the short hop to the U Street station and pulled out my phone for directions to the Lincoln Theater. My phone told me it was not going to do that. I looked up to get my bearings and beheld the Lincoln Theater, right across the street.
You can’t nail down a demographic here. You saw the goth crowd, piercings and pink/blue/green hair. There were a lot of nerdy girls, two in lab coats, wearing goggles. There were men in business casual, women in their nicer dresses. There were older people, there were younger people. There were infants, and there were grade-school kids. This is fine because, for all the horrifying deaths, Welcome to Night Vale is a surprisingly wholesome show.
One of the reasons Welcome to Night Vale has such a dedicated fan base is that it is inclusive. Cecil will always call you by your preferred name and pronouns, his courtship of scientist Carlos, who has amazing hair, was the only long story arc I was invested in. The audience had a queer vibe to it because they felt welcome here. Welcome to Night Vale isn’t a gay show, but it’s a show where it’s okay to be gay.
To my left was a family with an infant. That could bode poorly. I didn’t have to listen to the kid’s wailing because, as soon as the kid got uppity, the dad took him out of the auditorium. I feel bad he had to miss the show, but thank you, sir.
To my right were the T-shirts, shorts, and sandals type. The feminine one talked non-stop about being engaged then not engaged, then pursuing boys, then what to call themselves now that since they can’t be called a wife. Maybe “spouse”? Then they talked about their wife. Then, when the show started, they and the masculine one took hands.
I endured the musical guest. She could play the guitar well, her voice was good, but I do not like Ani DiFranco music. Every time she finished a song, I had hope we’d see the main event soon, dashed when she started again. I haven’t been this demoralized by singing since I watched Les Miserables at the Kennedy Center.
The show went on, introduced by Jeffrey Kramer, the co-creator. Cecil Baldwin took the stage, and he’s just as good looking and charming as he sounds. Tamika Flynn worked the crowd. And it was fine. It was a bit stripped down from past live shows, and it stuck the formula. It felt like a an episode of the, which I could get for free (with ads).
What did I pay fifty bucks for? To see Cecil in person, for one. But mostly for the crowd. I didn’t know anyone who listened to Welcome to Night Vale, so I felt along in my love for it. I was surrounded by people who had been swept away by the imagination and the cleverness of everything. There were people there who felt seen by the show.
In the End Times, that’s worth more than fifty bucks.
Jeremiah Murphy 