I'm here, I'm here

(dunno about you but I'm looking so forward to Groundhog Day this year)

Hello denizens of 2022:

Did we learn nothing in the 70s?

(Reality was better when we were friends with Nature and worked hard to try to appease her….all these Tennessee blizzards, Atlanta tornadoes, Colorado wildfires, Mississippi hurricanes, global pandemics….? I could do with less of them and more beautiful sunsets. And, you know, unfurling ferns, lazily blooming wildflowers, chirping birds. Just a personal preference.)

By now you must have heard, I survived Covid. Thanks to science, my worst symptom was loneliness. But thanks to even more science, even that was ameliorated by brilliant friends who know how to maneuver a phone camera. Go science! After five days of extreme isolation (let me tell you, I know now that going outside is one of the prime values of life and I feel an outpouring of sympathy for anyone homebound for any reason), I tested negative and emerged Covid-19 free.

It was New Year’s Eve and I promptly took myself out to celebrate (outside of course! and alone and double-masked - I’m not a psychopath):

I am a bit crazy, though.

Anyway, I hope you also celebrated in a way that made you happy. It’s a new year. I should have an article out any day on a big “name” site (literally, it’s a website about names!) I also wrote a Medium article about Covid testing in Lower Manhattan.

Other than that, I’m looking for authors to blurb my novel. If you loved “Don’t Look Up” and are a fan of Black Mirror, and have a book out, and you feel like seeing your book title on the front or back cover of a book that’s a little like “Her” and a little like this newsletter, hit me up! (Or, you know, check your inbox, because I may be in the process of writing you an email.)

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Here is a serious question for you, in case you want to make billions in 2022:

Why hasn’t anyone designed an elegant toothpaste?

I don’t mean something to stick the ugly toothpaste tubes into, those exist. I mean why has no toothpaste company gone “upscale” with their toothpaste? A nice pearly gray with bright white cursive lettering that stayed clean and that you didn’t have to hide when guests arrive. There are literally zero people in America who don’t brush their teeth. There are hundred-dollar toothbrushes. WHY is there no elegant toothpaste? (there is expensive toothpaste but it looks just like regular toothpaste only antique gold lettered and $100/tube.) I want elegant toothpaste!!

Was seeking an image of elegant toothpaste holders (there aren’t any of those either), I did find elephant toothpaste. I have no idea why this is called elephant’s toothpaste.

That’s enough of this. Go hug someone you are related to. Give them a kiss even. Do it for those of us still apart from our loved ones (my isolation is over but my family went away to a cabin since we couldn’t get through to the NYC hotline for free hotel rooms for people whose apartments do not allow them to isolate and only one family member has the virus. I was on hold four solid hours on TWO phones. The one time someone picked up, they transferred me back to the queue.)

Happy 2022 you guys - may you always have negative Covid tests and always keep a positive attitude.