Happy October! Witchy season is basically upon us. I lit my first fall candle of the fall recently, which is how you know it’s real. Speaking of witchy, are you going to watch The Craftwith us for our watch along this month?? There’s are few greater joys than watching a campy movie from 1996, so we hope you’ll join us on October 26th. Think of it as a Halloween pregame!
Hope you’re all enjoying some autumnal beverage while you’re reading this (I’ve got some pumpkin rooibos tea). Take care of yourselves.
Hugs,
Gaby — and Hannah, Marcelle, Coach, and Zoe
Subversive gameplay? Queering family? Putting your Sims into exit-free pools? If any of this resonates, check out this episode stat!
Marcelle went off in this one. We’re going to share a curated list of episodes you should watch via our newsletter, so stay tuned.
The girlies* have been been experiencing a little existential angst on Material Concerns!!! Look around, can you blame them? In these Part I episodes, Hannah, Marcelle, and Coach dig into some classic segments like Oops All Oops, Apocalypse Toolkit, and Consumer Retorts (and then save the rest for Patreon—get over there!)
As always, get part two of all Material Concerns episodes on Patreon!
Our $10+ tier is THEE place to be if you’re wanting to get in on that sweet watch along action. You’ll also get all the other good stuff, like: access to Part II of all of our Material Concerns episodes, a monthly Q&A with Hannah and Marcelle, a monthly mini-ep all about the zeitgeist, ad-free episodes, and bloopers!
Many of you have reached out to help me with my campaign and I am so very touched by your generosity! I only regret not being more clear in the newsletter: I’m actually not allowed to accept any donations from outside Alberta! 😭😭
This is really one of those instances where it is absolutely the thought that counts. You wanted to support me in my bid to make public education safe and accessible for kids. You are amazing! Thank you, thank you for that kindness.
Since I can’t accept the money, I would LOVE it if you emailed me to tell me what you did with it instead! Maybe you have a local organization that supports kids with disabilities? A sports league that welcomes gender expansive kids? A lunch program? Or maybe you use it to get yourself a treat! Whatever it is, let me know. I would love to hear about it. ❤️
Sorry again for the miscommunication, and thank you for being amazing!
You can find other info about volunteering/Alberta-based donations right here!
picture unrelated to the playlist, I just thought you should see it.
Being alive in 2025 is like being awake during surgery! Here are some revolution songs. Enjoy and listen on Spotify here and Apple Music here!
For most people, autumn marks the beginning of soup season. But I find soup challenging from a textural perspective which means it’s a sometimes-food for me. What I start longing for the second there’s a nip in the air is MASHED POTATOES and any possible vehicles for inserting MASHED POTATOES into my body aka THE POTATO MACHINE. And one of my top MASHED POTATOES ingestion methods is a vegan shepherd’s pie. Shepherd’s pie was one of the first things I learned to make as a vegan and it continues to be a staple in the McGregor-Purrdy household. There are many excellent fake meat options these days but when it comes to shepherd’s pie I prefer a good old-fashioned lentil base. Bonus: lentils are basically free! Anyone out there feeling the recession crunch may I recommend: lentils! My go-to recipe is Minimalist Baker’s. It’s delicious, filling, dirt cheap to make, and most importantly, PUTS POTATOES IN THE POTATO MACHINE.Listen. Streaming has radically changed the landscape of seasonal holiday viewing. Gone are the days of your weekly sitcom lineups getting hijacked by Thanksgiving, Halloween, and Christmas. You could, if sufficiently committed and adequately perverse, locate your favourite holiday specials and watch them any time of year. But one thing I appreciate about streaming services is the way they pay homage to the seasonal special by grouping them together at seasonally appropriate times and adding a shortcut to the home screen. It’s October, so the streamers should all be providing us with our Halloween shortcut menu, including the Disney+ shortcut to The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror annual specials. I adore these random episodes and highly recommend them to anyone who appreciates randomness, parody, and semi-obscure cultural references. These specials introduced me to Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Each special features about five short, discreet mini episodes, often parodies of more famous cultural touchstones but not always! Sometimes they’re just random! This October I’m recommending you make a little time for some of the scores of Halloween specials produced by The Simpsons!I may disappoint you but in an effort to offer a treat recommendation that costs no money, I recommend treating yourself to a made bed. OK, HEAR ME OUT™️! It doesn’t matter when you make your bed — so long as it’s sometime before sleep. Maybe you all already make your beds (good for you), but if you don’t, take away the pressure to do it at any certain time, just give yourself the gift of making it. Just once! It doesn’t have to be a habit people! It’s a treat you can give yourself! If that doesn’t hit for you, then I rec this.Y’all, I’m reading so much because I am in a PhD program! But I’m not really reading anything for school at the moment that I’d like to recommend. And because I’m reading so much for school I don’t have the mental energy to read anything of substance. So that means that I am going to be really vulnerable with you all and let you know that I’m reading ACOTAR. Do I recommend it? I guess, yeah? It’s brain smoothing and that’s sometimes what you need!I shan’t lie to you all, I’ve been listening to basically nothing because I have been watching ER at most hours of the day: while I’m working, when I’m done working, while I’m making dinner, etc etc., so I guess in many ways I can recommend putting on a TV show that you really like to listen to in the background of whatever you’re doing. Usually I only do this with shows I’ve seen a million times before (Gilmore Girls, M*A*S*H, etc) but ultimately I feel very at home at Cook County General rn and I do think under the right conditions I could probably order a CBC, chem 7, and liver panel correctly (for legal reasons this is a joke). I just started season six and I know this is kind of the beginning of the end of the show being “good” but I will be keeping it on in the background regardless.
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