Red Scare - Summer Dress Sadness
Episode Date: June 17, 2024The ladies discuss likes going private, the EU elections, the Hunter Biden verdict, the sundress discourse, and the latest age gap memoir....
Transcript
Discussion (0)
We're back. Hello, we're back.
Hello, we're back.
Hannah.
How's the ambient noise?
It's pretty loud in here.
It's fine.
We're doing a new thing called podcasting during the day in the living room versus at
night in the office.
Well, it's an old thing that we used to do before the baby came.
When I was the only baby on this podcast.
Yeah, it's interesting.
It's nice to see you in the daytime.
In a different light, yeah.
It'll be nice not to have to take a shower
from all the cigs we blast.
Happy Flag Day.
Happy Trump's birthday.
Happy birthday, Donald.
Happy birthday, our Fuhrer.
Mr. President.
What is Flag Day?
Good question. We were kind of talking about this last night.
Yeah, neither.
We didn't get a satisfactory answer.
No one really knew. Yeah. And we all just kind of saying fag day and laughing
like Beavis and butthead.
It's obviously not like a bank holiday.
I think it's just some kind of, you know, Betsy Ross.
To design the flag today.
Oh, oh yeah. She was quilting that flag.
Or good, I mean, interesting question.
No one knows.
Well, you know, by the time this episode comes out,
it won't matter anyway.
Exactly.
It'll be Juneteenth.
That's a great attitude to have.
Oh yeah, Juneteenth's coming up.
It's coming up, yeah.
Is that a federal holiday?
It is because the baby's school is closed.
Oh, interesting.
It's nice for the Chinese to recognize it
considering they love slavery so much.
Well, you know, people love taking the day off
and will take any opportunity they get.
Yeah.
I don't blame them.
Let's see what the deal with Flag Day is.
I've been kind of, I've had a radical, I don't know, I'm entering kind of a new phase.
Of what?
Of my life.
Okay.
It commemorates the adoption of the flag
by the resolution of the Second Continental Congress.
The flag resolution stated that the flag
of the 13 United States be 13 stripes,
alternate red and white, that the union be 13 stars.
Yeah, it's just, you know, we love the flag.
It's a good flag.
One of the better ones I'd say.
It's dynamic as fuck.
I definitely feel roused when I see it
due to nationalistic attachments I have for it as well.
I like when you're like driving through a quaint little small town and all the houses
have the flag in the front yard.
I like when the cranes like put up the flags, there's no pole and then it's just like billowing,
you know, like when there's like crane operators when you're driving.
Also love like a gigantic flag.
I love to fantasize about what would happen
if the flag fell on you.
Could be pleasant.
Kind of fun, yeah, like a big autism blanket.
Yeah, remember that thing they did in elementary school
where they would have that like parachute quilt thing
that you went under? Oh my God, that was so fun.
Yeah.
So clearly it's some kind of like repressed fantasy
about going back to childhood and being in gym class
and doing that activity.
That is kind of what I associated too.
Yeah.
Yeah, being like enveloped by a big piece of fabric.
Oh, but yeah, my new thing is,
yeah, instead of lying in bed all day and feeling guilty,
I lie in bed all day and don't feel guilty.
I'm moving past it.
I've decided it's valid to lie down all day long.
It's Proustian.
It's aristocratic.
It's like, I don't see why I should feel shame for rotting in my bed.
When, as we all know, I spent a lot of money on it.
And frankly, I feel like it would be bizarre for me to enjoy your time.
Well, for me to go sit or stand in another part of my apartment like a weird sim like
Like has to go like be in another part of I have a bed
right and I have a computer and I have a cell phone and I can what percentage of you of your day would you say you spend in
And around your bed well depends on the day
But on average, I'd say, if you average it out.
I mean, not counting, obviously, the night
when you're asleep.
Right, the day, like the waking day.
Yeah.
Like most of it.
Yeah, same.
I mean, okay, here's, we were just talking
about low self-esteem.
In the summer, I feel more more well, summer and winter.
I guess that, yeah, every season is good for life.
Yeah, there's and there's different reasons, like in the winter, it's it's cold
and your bones ache and you just want to.
And in the summer, it's the days too long and it's hot outside.
And you want to cool off in your dark room. Exactly.
You're really picking up what I'm putting down.
I took a power nap moments before you got here.
Oh wow.
Which is always risky
because I feel like I'm gonna like sleep past the alarm,
whatever, but yes.
In life, when you don't like something about yourself
such as a trait or a behavior, you have two options.
One, you can either change that thing,
which is quite difficult and involves some level
of compromise or sacrifice,
or you can just accept that facet of your character
instead of trying to master it
and not beat yourself up about it.
Well, yeah, like why do people associate productivity
with getting out of bed?
Like who?
I don't see why, you know, like I get everything,
you know, I did all my pod research today.
Yeah, you answer your emails, you do your online shopping.
And I was like, actually, like, I love this.
I'm not depressed. And I was like, actually, I love this. I'm not depressed.
And I'm enjoying my symptom.
And I'm- You go girl.
You reframed that narrative.
And this is like, fine.
What am I gonna do?
Lie on my couch?
Sit at a table?
Like, at a desk?
Yeah. I can't think like at a desk.
I can't think like this.
No, I can't live like this.
I just wanna get, yeah, like if I'm out of bed,
I basically wanna lie back down.
So I'm not gonna fight it anymore.
So yeah, that's what's been happening.
But someday, yeah, and like there are, you know,
I would say at least on average 3.5 days of the week,
I do get out of bed and have like things to do.
I mean, I had to go to the real world yesterday
that clock was ticking, that return window.
I had to return a dress.
If I didn't make it in time, just the L I would have taken psychologically.
Because it was expensive?
It was expensive.
Or fugly.
It sucked so bad.
It was just such a bad purchase.
And I was like, you have to return this.
Absolutely do not reconcine this.
Sometimes it's really hard to drum up the enthusiasm to make those returns.
But you really can't live with yourself. That's when I really hit rock bottom,
when I have some like,
a fugly and expensive garment in my closet
that's like, weighs down my soul.
Yeah, I was feeling the psychological pressure
of that yesterday.
So today I was just decompressing.
And also, well, you have a kid.
You don't want your kid to really see you like,
being bedridden.
Mommy's depressed again.
So, mommy has suicidal ideation.
A new book for children by the Red Scare girls.
But yeah, assuming, you know, knocking on wood,
I will have a family at some point, you know.
You have to get your energy stores up
by spending most of your adult life in bed.
Exactly, I'm saving it up like a battery.
And yeah, and I'm like, you know,
really have to kind of go have a family pretty soon-ish, you know?
So like, I really wanna take advantage of like,
you know, my single life
by like lying in bed as much as possible.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Do you hear the Charlie Xsacks song inspired by me?
I propose that we review the album back to back with that new Hulu documentary about
the Brat Pack called Bratz.
There's a lot of Bratz-centric content.
I'm excited to listen to the Charlie album,
but I don't think we're gonna have anything bad to say.
Yeah, or meaningfully critical.
And it's not gonna be particularly riveting.
Yeah.
I know a lot of girls and gays are dying to hear the review.
Well, here it is.
I'm too depressed to listen to it.
I'm gonna. I'm gonna get around to it.
It's just, yeah, I'm not really like,
I'm not, brat summer hasn't hit for me yet.
More of a bed summer for me.
It's gonna be bad for me.
I go to the gym twice a week.
A lesbian bed death summer.
You know, that's pretty good.
What do I need to get out of bed for?
No, take advantage, yeah.
But yeah, the Charlie song is kind of like a party girl anthem
that, you know, actually it's a, it's a great song.
She sent it to me a couple months ago and told me about it.
So I was like, you know,
but I'm, you know, it's not really, it doesn't totally,
it speaks to like an idea people maybe have about me.
It's like a naughty downtown and noisy party girl.
Yeah.
But actually.
When you're actually a bedridden recluse.
Yeah, more of a kind of like a squirrely loser.
With very low energy reserves for some reason,
some kind of hormonal imbalance or we're not sure what the issue is, but happy to be a
muse.
Yeah.
Whenevs, you know, and if she did want to write a song about lying in bed, I'd probably listen to that one too.
Well, I loved her COVID album because that one was a little, it was still kind of like pop music,
but with like the, you know. I just love her voice. Depressive edge. Yeah. I mean, she's a knockout.
Yeah. Charlie, can you write a song about me next? About how I'm not actually a single mom y'all.
I think nobody wants to listen to me. A song about being a parent. Well, yeah, technically out of wedlock.
That's what the song could be called.
Could be called out of wedlock.
Girls.
Old girls.
Yeah, I hear she got the guy, gay guy, or actually, sorry, I don't know if he's gay.
She got the Fontana 10.
What's that?
He's like a music reviewer.
I also was like, what?
He was like, John Fontana.
He's a famous music critic.
He never gives 10s and Brad is, you know, got a 10, I guess.
I'm into, so I'm into the cover art of the album that's become a meme.
Yeah.
And I love the memes that are like,
Brat font, is anyone hiring?
Yeah, I like the one that said Lori Lightfoot.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's, it got tired quick, the meme I'd say, but a fun, always good to have a
fun variation on a theme.
Elon Musk took the Twitter likes away.
Oh yeah, which created an avalanche of takes and outrage.
Yeah, I've kind of been in my luteal phase, so you know, being a bitch, and yeah, have
been publicly declaring my like how I don't care.
But clearly I really-
You're all of my Charlie XCX luteal phase. I have been being kind of a contrarian bitch and broadcasting how much I don't care.
But obviously I do kind of care and am sort of interested to see like I don't actually
care that you can't see the likes anymore that that much really, though it did cause me to notice the people
whose likes I was lurking.
What do you mean it caused you to notice them?
Well, because I do it almost reflexively.
The thing, part of the, this is a creepy part
of looking at people's likes that I personally partook in was like to see if
they're like awake or online or like when's the last time they had online activity.
It's like I use it as a way of like keeping track of people.
Yeah, it's like sharing your location.
Yeah, no, I actually have never thought about that.
That's not a healthy impulse.
Yeah, it's weird and bad and maladjusted.
And should tripwire your normal
and healthy shame instinct totally,
and we're all guilty of it.
I've never even thought about likes
because this made me think about how I use the likes.
Exactly.
And it's literally like,
I look at your likes sometimes,
I look at Leia's likes sometimes, I look at your likes sometimes,
I look at Leia's likes sometimes,
I look at some of my other girlfriends' likes sometimes
because when I wanna have a chuckle,
I can pretty much count on the fact
that you hoes are liking something funny.
But there's never been a time where I've looked at
a politically or ideologically motivated tweet
to see who was liking it to like make my mind up about
some hot button issue because I'm a normal healthy,
maybe not so healthy, but mature adult
who can do their own research.
That's crazy, yeah, I have a free, my mind is free.
And yeah, when people are kind of invoking this argument about like corporate fraud and
like how this will cause likes to be inflated to like over represent whatever.
Like bots and democratic operatives, which are one in the same already.
I'm like, why would you believe any number you saw on the internet anyway?
That's already, it's all gobbledygook to me.
It's already super weird.
Like I remember when Elon first acquired Twitter,
there would be weird moments where on your own
or somebody else's tweets, the like or retweet count
would be higher than the view count, which is impossible.
Impossible.
So it's already, I mean, yeah.
Like I just assume everything I see is fake.
Yeah, people were saying that it's bad because it removes the transparency from the manufacturing
of consent.
Oh, please.
It was the other thing.
It chips away at consensus reality.
Get real.
That guy, West Bester, had that tweet that was like, if some toady journalist posts viral
regime propaganda, you now have no way of knowing whether the likes come from people or bots.
And it's like, well, people who like viral regime propaganda
are effectively bots anyway.
So, and then I think Amy Therese was like,
oh, it seems like ripe for manipulation,
especially during an election year, which like,
I'll grant, I believe that, but also who cares.
I think it's over determining how politically instrumental
Twitter is now that it has become basically like a hotbed
for like fringe online activity post deal on most.
Like it's not like whatever back in like the censorious age
of like at Jack's Twitter rain or whatever,
it had the app had issues, but the fact that there were a blue check
cast of establishment made Twitter a more discursively legitimate place.
And now I think no one holds it in any esteem at all, what even people are saying on there.
I don't know if that's true because I think people like us don't hold it
in esteem any longer but there are a lot of like blue check and NPC types who do take it very
seriously. I guess that was the thesis of the whole Will Stancil profile was like that Twitter
does matter. Yeah I mean it I think it does more meaningfully than we would like to admit even
though we know
it's gay and retarded. The other take I saw a lot was that it's going to become a porn site. Well,
I mean, it already is a porn site. I think and that's I think the main reason why
Elon did it was because it's going to help him to like monetize pornography on it, which is like
clearly his biggest his best bet in terms of making money.
Yeah, which is, I guess also as somebody pointed out,
this move is good for big accounts
and bad for small accounts.
But also the basic gist as I understand it
is that the more data they can get off of users,
the better it is for their business model,
like whether in terms of like
optimizing the algorithm.
Retaining you as a user or converting you
to a paid subscriber or serving you ads.
Have you been more liberal with your likes?
I will get to that because I was thinking about that,
but also public likes are an impediment to that
because people like obviously self monitor.
Exactly.
Due to social and political pressures.
And I guess this opens the floodgates
for more liberal liking.
Yeah.
I get all that.
And I think also, as I understand it,
Elon's main goal is to eventually turn Twitter
into an AI product that's competitive
with OpenAI and Gemini,
and which is partly why he bought it in the first place
because it is like this vast growing captive trove
of user data.
Exactly.
So in that sense, it seems like a perfectly reasonable business decision on his end that
probably does have a lot of political implications, especially during an election year.
But I think it will there will be unforeseen consequences.
Yeah, that will be intriguing. I definitely, not that I self-censor probably to the degree
that I even should, but post the privatizing of likes,
I have definitely smashed the like on just,
just like someone's, literally people tweeting
the word Hitler, I've been like,
hee hee hee. I can like secretly like,
thrilled and naughty.
But that's like the
body holders for
yeah, but I just never that never I could I didn't want to
kind of compromise my you know, like that's like, I understand.
I just want to smash things that you know, are like, like, I just want to smash things that, you know, are like,
basically, like you asked, like a monkey and liking stuff more liberally.
And I think the answer is no, like I'm going to I'm going to quote something
Steve Saylor said way back when on X when he was like,
well, a lot of people assume that because I get into like
IQ differentials and FBI and CDC crime stats in public
that I must be saying much more vitriolic
and beyond the pale stuff in private,
like lunches and dinners.
And with me, the fact is what you see is what you get.
And I don't really go deeper than that surface stuff
that I'm talking about and that I make totally public.
So my likes were heretofore totally public.
I mean, I tweeted about this,
but like after six years of being called
an ugly and disgusting person on the internet,
I'm pretty a nerd to it.
But one thing that I can never get over
is like that practice that people do with me,
especially where they comb through my likes
to post on the subreddit about how racist and sexist I am,
because realistically my likes are pretty mild and anodyne.
I like some racist memes more because they're funny
than they're racist.
And I like some misogynistic content or whatever,
but also for the lulz. And I like some misogynistic content or whatever,
but also for the lulz.
But I would never like a tweet that was like
black people are inferior
and women should be stripped of the vote
because it's just not funny or cool and not a thing.
It's more like, well, like grimes got in trouble even for liking tweets from some like, you
know, I think it was like Spangler, whatever, on autism account or something.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
And there was like another one of these.
So yeah, I have mindfulness of that for sure is like, how will this look, blah, blah, people
see it, you know, I do think about that more because I've seen it happen
to you it's crazy like my philosophy is like you should give people the benefit
of the doubt people like stuff for all sorts of different reasons sometimes I
like tweets because they're informative and I don't know what I think about them
and I want to go back to them later. Yeah, exactly. I like it. It's not an endorsement.
Yeah.
Yeah. It'll, I think it's,
it'll change things actually in an interesting way when people don't.
Um, and in that way I'm pro private likes because I think it's more conducive to
like free thought. Because when people can see who's something, they can do this social policing thing of
generating-
Yeah, but the other thing to keep in mind about that is that, yes, you will be at least temporarily freed from social policing and like pure censorship.
But not just that even in like on God's still watching God sees all your likes.
Amen, sis. For that's for sure.
And probably like whatever the NSA and the FBI and whoever else has you on those watch lists. I mean, I'm also such a, I'm never, I'm, you know,
I, why wouldn't Elon just like, it's still data, right?
Like you're saying exactly.
There's receipts for everything you do.
All of your activity on the internet is essentially recorded.
And let's say- And if they really
wanna pull it up because- Of course.
You get nabbed as like a wrong thing criminal,
you're fucked anyway.
Exactly.
But no, I don't see myself getting into liking even more bigoted content.
I'll probably like some more. I'll probably definitely engage with, I don't know, it just kind of, it's more mindless. It feels more like.
Yeah, it's more low stakes, less high pressure.
Yeah.
And since like the person who made the post
can see that I liked it and not anyone else,
it feels like a private way of like signaling,
like communication, which was also, I don't know.
I'm like, yeah, I just don't care.
I'm like along for the...
Yeah, I like, well, I saw that exchange that you had
with ex-user and friend of the podcofee, Fianon.
I was like in the car coming from home
from our queer art house cinema event.
Yeah.
And like drunk out of my mind.
So I was like, what the fuck are these retards on about?
I'm not reading this gibberish.
But then I went back to it and I was like, oh yeah,
that's actually like so true what you said
that like the ship has already sailed on consensus reality.
And what we call quote common knowledge
is already so deformed by various algorithmic
processes, like bot activity and shadow banning and whatever. Yeah, like literally what you think
is the consensus. And I was thinking, I would add to that, that it's also like a cumulative process.
Because once the algorithm exerts its influence,
something that originally had a basis in reality
or had a grain of truth to it becomes warped
beyond recognition as it strays further and further
from the truth and becomes more of a meme.
And eventually like memes come to define the reality
versus reality
defining the memes.
The funniest memes have some semblance of like a truth claim to them.
Sure.
Like they're instantly recognizable as being observably true.
Like the Charlie XCX album cover.
Yeah.
But with a different word or phrase. Yes
Now that's that's a meme but when you look at like race discourse or dating discourse on my god Twitter You see how like truly far it has
Strayed from the reality on the ground. I've made this point before
That like my feed literally is so much because I engage with so much
obnoxious autistic religious squabble content that luckily I have the presence
of mind and understand this about my experience of using the internet.
Yeah.
But if I thought that my feed was a reflection of reality, This is about my experience of using the internet. Yeah.
But if I thought that my feed was a reflection of reality,
I literally would be like, wow.
Even more bedridden.
Even more.
But yeah, that these, the filioque and the East West schism
and these papal documents are some of the most important
things that people are like,
I'm like, everyone's talking about Vatican II.
I mean, but the reality is like no one is,
and I just like happened to engage with a certain,
you know, kind of content that then is like reaffirmed
and fed to me.
But literally people in the street would look at me
like I was crazy if I started talking about like the new people
encyclical and how
that's why they're trying to change Vatican one.
These dissident right people
who are oftentimes very very intelligent.
Let's face it.
And more or less correct in their assessment of the world,
they start to get a very perverted and deformed vision of reality that coincides with like,
it's like a confirmation bias, the worst aspects of reality.
And I think that that's a fundamentally like really bad and corrupting process.
You wanna stay like 20% libtarded.
And the streets are tough out there on x.com.
Yeah, it's hard to stay grounded
when you're on the worldwide web.
Having a ball posting and then...
But then you get like a Dunning-Kruger effect type thing or whatever it's called where like
people I guess like overestimate their level of expertise.
I'll say. As they become... That's for fucking sure. people I guess like overestimate their level of expertise.
I'll say.
As they become.
That's for fucking sure.
Less and less tethered
to like what Sailor calls anekdata.
Right, right.
So yeah, I don't know.
I mean, yeah, we're not.
I mean just like information that's self-selected
to already confirm biases that you have about. I mean, people like information that's self-selected to already confirm biases that you have about.
I mean, people were talking about echo chambers in like 2016
and I feel like that process has just like been amplified
and like now people are so locked in
that they can't even really just talk about
how fragmented reality is.
Oh my God.
You gotta take that red pill, y'all.
And see that these twisted, Elon Musk,
he's just playing games with you, man.
He's honeypotting you until liking more liberally
so then he can throw you in a fucking gulag.
So don't fall for it.
Stay vigilant, okay?
But in a way, I think this could be good.
Yeah, I think it might have good unforeseen consequences.
It'll help people understand that they can
and should distance themselves from online echo chambers.
You think?
You think it'll help?
I hope so.
Because they won't have the social satisfaction
of the liking mechanism?
Yeah, of coming through people's likes.
Remember when you could see
what people were liking on Instagram?
It must've been years and years ago.
Yeah, I remember that, yeah, there was some feature there.
And there was also a feature that with the green light
that told you when someone was online.
They still have that,
cause they have like a chat function now,
but you can turn it off.
But some people don't have the wherewithal too.
Yeah.
Like my boyfriend.
I can see that you've been online.
I just like personally don't.
Why don't you respond to my text?
He's a saint.
Oh my God.
I'm like a spur you talking to.
Why were you liking Hitler Greiper for 20 sweet?
And not text. Why were you liking Hitler Griper for 20 sweets?
And not texting me back. Yeah.
I've quoted this many times on the pod,
but Felix Biederman had the best take on this.
He was like, yeah, tweeting and texting
are different energies.
Yeah.
I mean, it's so true, Yeah. Look at me sounding like a
good little left to live. It's true. No one seriously texts me back. I'm gonna do something really bad.
Oh man.
Crazy situation in France, huh?
You hear about this? Great segue.
I didn't.
I didn't either.
Well, you mentioned it yesterday and so I looked it up.
Pretty interesting.
Maybe we could have a few takes.
It is interesting because I was reading up on how so okay so my
crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my crown my about this before, beating off a dead horse, whatever.
Yeah, I do. My wires get so crossed because I always think
that Le Pen is Macron's wife.
Yeah, because they look, I literally have to write down
Le Pen is not Macron's wife.
She's a different political candidate.
Racist mommy milky fantasy. She looked like they're the same type of weird old bitch.
Old French crone. Yeah. I think he should get married to Marie Le Pen.
Yeah. And heal the schism in French politics. Yeah. So what happened was he called for a snap.
It's called a snap election.
Another term I just learned yesterday.
Snap election.
Oh snap.
Snap.
But it doesn't mean that he won't be the prize anymore if he loses.
No because he's on track to be president until 2017.
Exactly.
But it's like because there was this like EU vote.
This is not a supranational vote.
This would be a domestic vote.
Right, but there was a supranational vote
where Le Pen crushed, apparently, or whatever party
she represents.
The national rally, formerly the National Front,
I think that's a bad name.
These have such fake Euro,
I hate to see all the Euro political parties
with their fake, weird, phony,
not to be a Holden Caulfield about it,
but they're all so phony and fake and weird.
The People's Party is the main one.
I love how all the right wing parties
have to have front in the name.
Yeah.
Cause it sounds like Hitler stormtroopers.
Yeah.
Like moving to the national front.
Yeah.
The war front.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So she won blah, blah, blah.
I guess I was reading that these elections
happen every five years.
The last one was in 2019.
We know what happened since then.
There was a pandemic, there was a war,
there was more immigration. There was a pandemic, there was a war, there was more immigration,
there was more economic stagnation, more hits to the cost of living and the quality of life, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, they have like a bunch of parties in the EU system, but the two major ones
in most countries are basically like a center right party and a center left party. And so you can make an analogy with US politics
and Democrats and Republicans.
But a friend of mine was explaining
that that's not a really optimal analogy
because those parties tend to skew more leftward anyway.
In Europe?
In Europe, yeah.
Yeah, it's all-
Because they're all like democratic socialists
or social Democrats. Yeah, it doesn't seem like, yeah. Yeah, it's all- Because they're all like democratic socialists or social democrats.
Yeah, it doesn't seem like, yeah,
when people just talk about like the quote
far right in Europe, I just assume that basically means
like center left.
Yeah, but then to the right of that,
there are these like nationalists, even secessionists,
like Euro skeptic parties,
which are basically like, fuck Islam, close the borders.
France is for the French.
Yeah. Like immigration is their marquee cause.
Well, yeah. So I heard, yeah, that this is like
the snap election after this like loss
in on a European scale,
then having like a national French snap election
seems really ill-advised for Macron
because he's not as popular as the Le Pen and could lose.
But I-
The Pope vote? Yeah, but I...
Yeah, but he said that he wants to have the vote
for clarity and sort of, I guess the word he used
was clarity to sort of see where he stands
and he's already pretty unpopular.
But the idea that I heard kind of floated
that I thought was compelling was that basically
by having the snap election now, if Le Pen wins,
he'll remain the president, but he'll sort of have
to share power with a prime minister that he appoints
from Le Pen's party.
Yes.
And that that might actually potentially
be a politically savvy move for him
because when the 2027 election rolls around,
he's basically giving Le Pen like three years of rope
to hang herself with and like to fumble the back
by giving them like a little bit of power.
He's basically forcing the issue, forcing them to govern.
Yeah, and then like it's won't go well.
Yeah, he's forcing them to like walk the walk because forcing them to govern. Yeah. And then it won't go well.
He's forcing them to walk the walk,
essentially testing them.
Yeah, he's testing them, and Europeans are retarded.
And he's trying to see if they'll hit the ground running
or collapse upon arrival, whatever.
I don't foresee it going well on a legislative level.
If the right did see some semblance of power, it seems like
there would be a lot of gridlock that he could that you know it's not like they would be
truly empowered to enact meaningful change anyway and then they would just sort of they
would fumble the bag essentially and I mean that's the impression I kind of yeah I got
I guess you don't know anything about this I watched a YouTube video that explained it
like it was like had this really nice Asian
Canadian man who was talking as if he was talking to a child and I was like, yes, okay. I was like,
I'm understanding geopolitics. I'm doing it. I'm lying down. I'm watching these videos.
And I'm lying my white ass down and listening. And I think in Germany a similar thing happened
where actually the Merkel's party
did win the majority of seats,
but then the second best showing
was from alternative for Deutschland,
which is like the hard right party.
Right, I heard about this from people.
I don't know if I,
from art people.
Art people.
Yeah, cause they all live in Berlin.
Because they love to live in Berlin.
And the texts, they could say, whatever.
And obviously, the Israel-Palestine conflict
has been really messy in Berlin because you're not even
allowed to talk about Jews stuff there because they're so, there's such a complex.
They're being besieged by mozzies.
Yeah, it's really messy, messy, messy.
This probably comes as no surprise.
Obviously the right-wing parties gaining a foothold
looks like a response to unlimited immigration. I don't necessarily know that
that's the case. I think it's probably more directly a response to just the economic contraction
and stagnation that all of these European countries are experiencing. Germany, for example,
is like on track to
see a contraction of the economy for the first time ever in years because they can no longer
rely on cheap Russian oil. I mean, Europe's people messed up, dude. And well, the EU, I think
that's my take is it's like the European Union. Yeah. That there is just like basic conflict
between nationalism, right wing impulse and globalism, kind of left impulse.
And so there's just like this like oscillating
and like tension between those
that like basically is gonna happen.
Yeah, and in this way, I hate to disappoint people,
but I'm kind of a neolib when it comes to this
because I really, yeah, well,
because I really like the idea
of independent nations with national sovereignty
and veto power who get to preserve their cultures
and values and norms.
I love that idea.
And in that way, I was like,
why does that make you a lib?
Well, okay, I'm getting there.
Okay, sorry. I'm following. Yeah.
Originally when bregs that happened to me, it was like,
possibly a welcome development.
Like it wasn't necessarily a bad thing because it was like the people revolting
against the rootless cosmopolitans or whatever. Um, and then,
cool it with the antisemitic or my chuds and racists and whatever.
Yeah. That all went a bit over my head.
But I think just the ship has sailed on that era too.
You think?
The era of like nationalism. Yeah.
Why?
If anyone can do it, it's the French.
It's us.
No, I think yeah, I would love for France.
I mean, their culture is so valuable.
Yeah, I mean, I'm like spiritually totally on board with it.
Fuck Spain, fuck all these other countries.
But like functionally, I don't think it'll work.
It's just like a rational calculation
that I'm making in my bedridden impaired mind.
Yeah, I mean, I have no idea.
And I think like the real problem
is that people can no longer make a living
or support a family in their own city and in their own country and
Immigration is a big part of the problem
But it becomes like the only talking point and the only focal point because of course when people when people's dollar
Doesn't stretch as far as it used to. When they're franc, you mean?
When they're franc?
Yeah.
Or I guess euro, they don't even have francs anymore.
When they're euro, it doesn't go as far as like-
I really thought I got you too,
and then I said the wrong currency anyway.
I was like, they don't have dollars in Europe, Anna.
I'm using it as a metaphor.
I know, I know.
Their shackles.
Yeah.
But people become obviously resentful and angry.
Yeah, no, of course.
And take it out on the Muslims.
But then the right wing also bongos things
and then people, I don't know how people.
I'm actually on board with all these right wing parties,
basically anti-immigration closed border stance,
but they don't have an alternate model.
They can't offer the people anything.
And like the fact that-
Well, didn't Maloney really like,
people are really bummed about her?
Yeah, yeah.
Or she's Italian?
Yeah, immigration is like the insult to injury, you know?
And I forgot who said this,
but another friend of mine put it really well
that basically like a protectionist, isolationist
economic policy only works in if you're an economic power,
if you're like a Switzerland or a Norway,
if you impose, implement that kind of policy.
Well, that was the idea with the EU, right?
But then like they bankrupted Greece and shit.
Yeah, but if you implement that sort of policy
in an economically like stagnant and struggling country,
you just hobble it more.
I mean, it seems to like, that's how it seems to work.
That's what happened in Greece was that they joined the EU
and then had to pay these like weird debts.
This happened, this was like 10 years ago or whatever.
I remember being kind of like not really knowing,
knowing even less about geopolitics than I know now, if you can believe it and being, but being kind of like not really knowing knowing even less about geopolitics than I know now
if you can believe it and being but being kind of like disturbed and like not totally knowing why
I mean I think Greece was just like proffered by the EU overlords in the guise of like resuscitating it
But like I really couldn't understand like why yeah like how that all of that came to pass I guess
yeah but we're not gonna get to the bottom of it
on here on this, on this, not today.
Leftist and liberals love to hate
parties like the former national front
and the ADF and whatever,
because they're racist and Islamophobic.
Yeah.
But the real reason to hate them
is that they're economically
reactionary. They don't really offer like a right. I mean, I really don't know what
they're all like an economic path forward. I mean, I'm sure they do. If you look at their
fine print and their websites and stuff, I'm sure they have something to say but I don't know like I don't know how breaking up
the EU is gonna work well yeah I don't it's just seems just practically yeah if
there's a compelling case for it I would love to hear it yeah I mean it'd be yeah
I'd like feel compelled by the idea, but for no real reason,
like I have no idea.
And it's not really that I have a dog in the fight actually.
Yeah, just like have this like, basically reactionary hostility towards the EU.
So I'd love to see it, you know, just like, yeah.
Wait, the other day, let me show you, I saw these guys outside my apartment
who are from, I like, me and my, yeah,
I saw these guys who are all carrying like weird flags
and had masks on and looked like Nazis.
And I was like, what?
I was like, huh?
Not like, you know, World War II historical Nazis, but like Wignots.
And then I kind of approached them
and saw that they had, yeah,
their shirts had blood and soil.
And they were partaking in a political demonstration,
which is common in my neighborhood though not.
And they were from an organization called
the New Jersey European Heritage Association.
And yeah, they all had like ski masks on,
on the back of their shirts,
it said reclaim your nation,
reclaim your heritage was like a Spartan.
This guy was really cool.
He was like clearly autistic.
He has a big Gatorade in his pocket.
And yeah, they were wearing these like you rad scare merch
Like reclaim your nation of New Jersey
of New Jersey
Europeans, we don't call it then Jerusalem for nothing and then they unfurled this banner that said
Israel Israeli attack on USA Liberty killed 34 Americans. It wasn't a mistake.
Ngeha.com was their website.
And then when you go, I like went on their website
right away and yeah, there's like a pregnant blonde woman
in a field.
There's no blonde people in New Jersey.
The descendants of the European founders
are in a struggle for survival.
Don't sit idly by as we fight for our existence.
And then you press this take action button
and it's literally like, give us all your contact information.
Like, are you of European non-Semitic descent?
How can you help?
It's like, ask.
I'm sorry, that does not exist in New Jersey.
There were probably like polls in Slovak,
because their banner said,
Dasha Nikrusova, will you marry me?
Well, they just seem, it was so,
they so clearly seem like feds because I happen to know because
a
couple weeks ago, there was a bunch of
anti
Zionist Hasid's demonstrating on my street
in that same zone and
I was having a depressive episode that day and was like they were like wailing. They were being so annoying and like wailing and screaming.
And so I like went down there and was trying to ask them when they like were
planning to wrap things up with like my tears in my face and like ugly boots,
mentally ill woman. And, um,
they were all ignoring me cause they're like not allowed to talk to women.
And then some cop was like, they got a permit till 6.30 or whatever.
And I was like, oh, thank God.
So yeah, so it's like on this part of New York,
I know that you have to get like a permit
from the government to demonstrate
there's no like organic, real like grassroots
demonstrating happening.
They literally give you like real estate basically.
And yeah, to like advertise your weird neo-nazi affiliations that then take
you to a website where you put in all of your identifying information and offer them like
interesting facts about how you can information about yourself and how you can help them and
they're like racist quest i was like these people are fed i've never seen sold i've never seen more like fed-ass people in my life.
This is nuts.
They might not even know that they're feds.
Some of them might, but some of them definitely know
that they are.
Some like John Voight, John Walken ass motherfuckers
from the Tri-State area.
There was not even like a dozen of them.
You know, it was like such a small, it seemed so sketchy.
And the shirts just seemed kind of silly, honestly. such a small, it seemed so sketchy.
And the shirts just seemed kind of silly, honestly.
I mean, yeah, you typically don't see like
right-wing white supremacist organizations being allowed to demonstrate unless they are fans.
Yeah, so you're on notice,
New Jersey European Heritage Association.
Michael Tracy should get embedded in the New Jersey European Heritage Association.
They have an Instagram and stuff like get real.
That's how we're gonna meet guys.
You can buy stickers.
You can get isn't it time you took your own side sticker
with like a QR code?
Oh yeah, look at that.
Isn't it time you did that 23 and Mianom?
Ha ha ha.
Western man.
Which way, Western man.
Isn't it time you took your own,
these are stickers you can print out.
Black crimes matter.
Uh oh, uh oh.
Look, this is organic grassroots stuff that I saw.
Their collateral is baller at bangs.
Tired of the anti-white propaganda.
Yeah, it's-
We need to get you boys consulting for Supreme.
Whoa, cool.
These are actually interesting.
Nationalism could have prevented this.
Migrants accepted.
Now we are infected. Open border prevented this. Migrants accepted. Now we
are infected. Open border spread disease. Closed borders. The best vaccine. That's so poetic.
Me Chinese. Me play joke. Me ruin Boston because I'm woke.
Did you just come up with that?
To hell no, please.
I'm not that much of a comedic genius.
No, it was a really great tweet.
I saw that had like eight likes and then I retweeted it and it went viral and had like
8,000 by the end of the day.
It was about the Boston mayor, Brianna Wu, who's like...
Trans?
No, Brianna.
Oh my God.
I'm so mentally ill.
That no, that is the boop.
I actually don't know who.
Her name is like Brenda Wu or something.
And there's a, I'm so retarded.
That's it, you've just sealed your, yeah.
There's a Chinese female Boston mayor
who's on the stop Asian hate train.
She's full of beans.
She's totally privileged.
She's a fraud.
And has never experienced racism in her life.
And of course.
Well, stopping to hate in hindsight
was actually so insanely,
I mean, we probably said this on the show at the time even,
but it was like, I can't believe anyone fell for that crap.
I know, I know.
But she's a subversive wrecker
who's like single-handedly
ruining the racist legacy of Boston.
It's a damn shame.
I'm sure they have some grassroots,
not very federal informant seeming organizations
one can join if they're looking to.
The Mark Wahlberg Association.
Hehehehehehe.
For Eurocentrism.
They did not look, they were all pretty scrawny.
Like none of them looked so healthy either.
Like I wasn't like-
That's a thing with the Wignats.
I think they should be allowed to protest.
Well they are.
That's the, that's, it turns out they just are allowed by the city.
That's them, gives them a permit
to stand on the street.
They tell you everything you need to know about them.
So true.
Yeah.
They're all like 120 pounds.
They look like logo.
Yeah, and either really tall or really short,
but they're all 120 pounds.
And either really tall or really short, but they're all 120 pounds. They all look like that white rapper slash DJ who was like a teen star in the early 2000s, DJ Qualls.
Remember that guy? It's before your time.
I know Aaron Carter.
Yeah.
Did he die?
Yeah.
Fuck.
Didn't he?
I think he did, yeah. Yeah. I think I remember.
Yeah. Nick Carter is the brother who still lives. Yeah. Yeah. No, Aaron was troubled. Yeah. He was
the Hunter Biden of that family. He got emlusted. Um, anyway. Oh, Hunter Biden.
HUNTY.
Guilty of three counts of.
Also, honestly, and this is how you know I'm nonpartisan.
Though I am a MAGA Republican.
When I say nonpartisan, I mean I'm a MAGA Republican,
but I am, you know, nonbiased, I guess.
Non-binary.
I mean nonbinary.
Also kind of a sham trial,
not really something a lot of people get brought to trial for,
something that seems really like,
he got in trouble for buying a gun legally,
but lying about his drug use
because he was a crack head at the time.
And a bad ranch hook, yeah.
Is that a felony?
Can we fact check this?
I think so.
Because yeah.
There's three counts of some shit.
First impression, a lot of people are saying that
the Biden guilty verdict like gives the lie
to Trump's persecution narrative
around his own guilty verdict.
Gives the what?
Like it calls into question.
Oh yeah, felony gun conviction.
Yeah.
So, okay, what Hunter Biden did off the bat sounds a lot more felonious than what Trump
did.
A thousand percent.
Yeah, for sure.
But yeah, yeah, yeah.
But it is.
Yeah. but it is, yeah. But it seems like a flaw sort of in our system
where you expect crack heads to self-report.
If it's a crime to buy a gun while smoking crack,
like we should drug test people who are trying,
and you know I love the Second Amendment, I would never,
but we should drug test people who are buying guns
because uh why would a crackhead tell you that they're not high on crack they
are how was it found out that he falsified his
background check uh well no they there was a lot of
tests like he was visibly high no there was testimony from people who knew
him at the time you know corrobor. And what was he doing buying it?
Why does Hunter Biden need a gun?
And why can't he buy a gun?
Well, I know why I tweeted this,
but you know, he could have bought a gun illegally,
probably easily the same way he was buying drugs,
but he wants to get in trouble for attention
because he's like the troubled bad boy
of the Brandon family.
You know, he wanted to put the gun in his mouth and look at
himself in the mirror.
Yeah, he wanted to take some dick pics.
In his box.
Well, there was a photo of him.
I subscribed to the New York Post finally, which has really
been fantastic.
I love the news.
So I've been they've been reporting a lot on the Biden trial,
though I wouldn't say I'm particularly more informed
about it, because it's all pretty salacious,
kind of yellow journalism.
But I do know that the gun he bought is different
from the gun that he is holding in a nude mirror selfie,
which is actually an airsoft handgun that might also be
vaguely criminal to have.
But the one he bought was like some kind of revolver and a friend of the pod, Weedslip420,
testified along with his ex-wife and his brother's widow who he had an affair with.
All these women came and sort of said that he had corroborated this widow who he had an affair with. Yeah, all these women came and sort of said that,
oh, he had corroborated this story
that he had been a drug user in that era
when he got the gun.
I remember how hard it was keeping that secret
when we had Zoe on.
Honestly, kudos to us,
because we've been knowing about Zoe and Hunter Brandon
since 2019.
Yeah.
We're such ride or die hoes.
I know.
How dare you comb through my legs?
How dare you?
We probably said something
that can purge us or illegal or definitely incriminating.
Yeah, we're gonna be on trial next. They're gonna play the audio from that
episode where she talks about she likes the pile the pile driver is her
favorite sex position. That's all I remember because we were smoking a ton
of weed on that episode and she told told us that I asked her a favor.
And actually that episode was recorded right here
in this living room and not in the home office.
Because we used to do the pot out here back in the day.
Where history was made.
So he actually, everybody was like,
Anna, are you gonna defend Hunter the way
that you defended Trump out of principle?
But it does sound like what he did was again, more felonious.
But no one got a misdemeanor that was with an expired statute of limitations
that was a bespoke charge that was then also enhanced.
But, you know, I will defend Hunter, not to the extent that, you know, I will defend Hunter not to the extent that, you know, I did Trump,
but it is not. It is an unusual thing to be charged for that typically is kind of
it's like it's akin to kind of like when the doctor asking, you know, it's like
asking if you smoke and you say no or whatever.
It's like obviously when you're buying a gun and they ask you if you smoke crack,
you just say no, because you're you're buying a gun and they ask you if you smoke crack you just say no I would not be surprised if this this is clearly a fully political gambit to I
Joe Biden he said that he was gonna accept the outcome of the trial and not try to interfere with or influence the process
You know in a clear-cut dig at Donald Trump. He said he would not pardon his son
That's a typical Democrat L where they think
that not pardoning your own son will work in their favor.
Right, because then they get to say, then they get to reaffirm the kind of no one is
above the law refrain that like, and it also is like a huge distraction from Hunter's real
crimes would probably have to do with like all the political corruption and stuff he was doing in Ukraine. Yes. Which like now no one's talking about because
there's all this like salacious crack smoking dick pic stuff that's obviously way more interesting.
But his real crimes are definitely far worse than buying a gun and being a drug addict.
Yeah and involve like foreign corruption and influence peddling. But here from CNN, the Hunter Biden verdict
also contradicted the central rationale
of Trump's multiple legal defenses
in his four criminal cases, several civil matters,
and his entire presidential campaign.
This is the false notion that he is a victim
of a weaponized legal system by a justice department
that exclusively targets Republicans.
I mean, he is the victim of a weaponized legal process. It doesn't have to exclusively targets Republicans. I mean, he is the victim of a weaponized legal process.
It doesn't have to exclusively target Republicans
and you don't have to like target your own family.
The Democrats are also fully capable
of like sacrificing one of their own,
especially a flunky and fail son like Hunter Biden,
who no one will go to bat for at this point.
And it may or may not be like a game of 40 chess.
Yeah, in a way he's like, you know, I think the,
you know, people do feel sympathetic towards Hunter Biden.
He's like a humanizing kind of like PR influence
for the Brandon family.
And so he's like serving his function also
in his like black sheepiness of being like, you know,
like, oh, and but like Joe loves him, loves his son.
And Papa Joe gets to look principled and noble.
Yeah, but also like, you know.
In his long suffering struggle to save his son,
but his unwillingness to budge on the principles
undergirding the American legal system
and political process or whatever.
What a fucking sham, dude.
And also besides, plenty of Republicans
wanna see Trump go down.
Oh yeah.
And hate him.
Of course, yeah.
And he's not being targeted because he's a Republican
and no one has ever claimed that.
typical liberal consensus reality.
Exactly.
I do like that meme.
That's like two of the dumbest bitches you've ever seen
saying exactly.
That's what we do here.
Oh, do you wanna talk about sundresses?
Yeah, we sure can. We can pivot to that.
But before we do, a friend of mine asked me today,
like, do you hate Hunter Biden
and do you think he's a bad person?
No.
And I was like, the fuck do I care?
We're one of the never even thought of that. We're one of the only people who read his mem quote memoir.
You people might recall troubled person and an amoral person.
But yeah, I wouldn't. and an amoral person. But.
Yeah, I wouldn't, I don't think he's like,
ha ha, so cool, like the way that like,
kind of like, DSA leftards valorize him
in this like, memeified way, you know,
where they're like, actually it's too dope
to be a fucking crackhead and like,
hang out with sex workers or whatever.
But it's like, no, I think he's definitely probably
like a pretty bad guy, but like he's part of this like
really broke ass political quote dynasty that is like.
Sensitive old man.
We get the Hunter, Brandon we deserve, you know.
This part was funny.
Some of the GOP reaction to Biden becoming a convicted felon was bizarre.
One of Trump's most fervent supporters, Georgia rep Marjorie Taylor Green,
baselessly suggested on X that a verdict produced by a jury of his peers
with some kind of elaborate plot, quote, Hunter Biden just became the Deep
State sacrificial lamb to show that justice is balanced while the other Biden crimes remain ignored. She wrote on X
I mean of all the things that she said, yeah, that's not that's not the craziest thing. That one's like low-key kind of true. Yeah
Anyway, sundresses
The moment sort of passed, but I feel like I'll kind of ever, you know, still the season
for sure.
Just when I thought I was out another even more retarded discourse.
Yeah, pops off.
So this was sort of like, can you explain this to me because I don't know how it started.
I don't know how it started I don't know how it started I know at some point EV magazine a right-leaning women's magazine that viper's nest of trad larping prostitutes
yeah I hate to drag other women down as we we all know. I would never do something like that, but I don't really fuck with the vision of Evie Mag
and find them to be really like, ugh, you know, a drag.
And so yeah, they, not even, like literally is dumb.
I'm actually giving them too much credit.
No, it's like something dumber than that.
I did hear that they were getting the Teal bucks.
But I can't imagine Peter Teal funding women.
I know, I know, I know.
I can't imagine Peter Teal funding women.
He doesn't care about women.
No.
He's a fag.
Except his surrogates.
Exactly, for his butt babies.
And even then he doesn't care about them that much.
He definitely doesn't give a fuck.
I mean, anything's possible, like maybe through some like,
if he is funding it, he might not even know it,
then it could be some kind of like arm of his whatever.
But yeah, I'm not really a reader of EVMag.
I'm not really quite the- I'm not really a reader. I don't, you know, I'm not really a reader of Evie Mag. I'm not really quite the...
I'm not really a reader.
I don't read much.
So I don't know.
No, I...
But I feel like the sundress discourse was sort of happening
maybe even before that.
There was like a lot of confusion, it seemed about what a sundress was initially.
A sundress is like porn or being a wigger.
Yeah.
You know it when you see it.
My Matt Walsh, what is a sundress special?
You know when you see it.
I agree basically with that.
I do associate for some reason though,
I know this is not necessarily true,
but to me yeah like okay
uh like let's talk platonic ideal of a sundress right to me white yeah
okay white white white white and like gauzy white gauzy dress like muslin or linen or sheer diaphanous cotton. Yeah, Ray, I mean, people are, so then EV Magazine drops the sundress,
the $179 Rayon yellow floral sundress
with the built-in bra.
Yes.
Which, I don't know.
He thought our merch was bad.
Ha ha ha!
And it's the fuggliest fucking dress you've ever seen.
It's not even Aritzia level.
It's She-En grade, like god damn trash.
It's a horrible dress.
It's carcinogenic.
I mean, rayon whatever.
Online?
Unlined.
Okay, so. This piece of shit fucking Okay, so.
This piece of shit fucking dress, man.
Okay.
Yeah.
So I guess, okay.
I wear guizzo, okay?
I buy guizzo garments that are,
I buy stuff that's advertised to me on Instagram
all the time, because I'm a whore and I have no taste
and I'm like, I'm a mindless.
That's where, even though I use
Instagram less than Twitter, that's where my money is really like they have tapped into like-
Me too. I copped those um, Isamaya lip balms.
Oh yeah. Yep. I'm buying always-
That have like the little penis-
I did not buy those-
Engravings because it offends me. It offends me, but they're so good.
Are they?
They're amazing.
Wow.
I can't do it.
I can't, it would feel me was such,
I can't rub the penis thing on my lips.
That's crazy.
No, they come, so they come in like a standard tube
and then there's like the penis one.
It's like a cool sculptural item
that you can have in your home that looks beautiful at a distance.
I'm a prude, I'm sorry.
I'm an E.B. Mad Girl myself, so I don't care.
But I did buy the Sofia Coppola,
a Gustin Bauderer capsule collection with bombs.
And like, I almost, yeah, yeah, I do, yeah, of course.
And I buy all sorts of truck and garbage clothing
that I like basically have to donate
or throw in the trash immediately.
One woman African landfill.
So I'm not above a cheap shitty dress, God knows.
No, but so basically the idea is that men like sundresses
because they make women look more sexually attractive.
Breedable.
And sexually available, yeah, breedable.
And then women allegedly fall into one
of two camps. Either you also like sundresses as a woman because you want to directly aggressively
attract attention by mogging other women or you hate sundresses because the sisterhood is a cartel,
quote, cartel that keeps its
members in line and prevents them from outmogging one another.
This was like a take I saw from my buddy season.
I see. I saw this.
Let me say one thing, OK, because there is, I think, a vast spectrum of a sundress.
There is like the slutty sundress, the breedable, like the sundress you wear
when you want, when you're in your Lana Del Rey moment playing video games. Yeah. I mean, his favorite sundress, the breedable, like the sundress you wear when you want, when you're in your Lana Del Rey moment,
playing video games.
I mean, his favorite sundress,
watch me get undressed, you know?
You're like actually are,
both are pornographic.
One is more like slutty, fun, summer kind of vibe.
And then the other is like kind of a puff sleeve or like a more trad.
There's definitely like a variety of like sundress that I think people refer to
when they mean more of a church dress.
Both of which I'm kind of in the market for because I contain, you know, multitudes.
No, but I think it just just I hear what he's saying.
I get it.
But I think it's like simpler than that.
Sun dresses.
I too subscribe to your platonic ideal of a sun dress, which is simple, minimal white.
Yeah.
Kind of like my ideal society.
No, but it just like in practice.
Maybe a floral, but still a white floral.
Yeah, like a ditzy mini floral.
Yeah, yeah.
But like in practice, I find sundresses to be foggy,
flimsy, unflattering.
They add 10 pounds unless you already have a perfect body.
I understand this one has a built-in bra,
but a built-in bra is like simply not the real thing.
Who was asking who was like the issue with sundresses?
They're kind of expensive for how cheap they are.
I mean, I love the brandy wrap dress.
It's extremely flimsy, but it is like in the,
you know, and the peak to end of summer,
like you kind of do need to just put on a dress
that's basically disposable.
No, I agree with you.
But then you don't want a high price point, exactly.
Yeah, you want like a $20 brandy or Target dress.
A tankini.
Yeah, and I'm familiar with the cut and construction
of the EV sun dress.
Heart on the Bar.
And it, yeah, because it's like a style
that I've seen for decades now. I think like
Delia's did it. Easy Pickens did it all the stores of like the free course it had ways
with the like winter garage. I mean, I don't I'm not looking at a photo of it. But I in
my memory, right? It has like kind of like ruffled spaghetti straps Last night when Glenn Belvario,
new friend of the pod,
said that Barbara Kruger's art gives him migraines.
Bright colors and loud prints give me migraines.
I'm not a fucking barnyard animal.
I'm not gonna wear your sundress.
I mean, I came apparently in
a white floral as well, but the yellow one was, it's hideous. I would never, it does not speak to me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's horrible, cheap, ugly.
I don't know a single man who would respond to this type of garment.
I mean men are so stupid.
They really are.
But if you want to appeal to men while appeasing women, there are so many different types of dresses to choose from.
Like an LVD or like one of those Chong Sam dresses.
Really hot.
Men don't even, I think men don't even register
those necessarily as.
Men register, they just register skirts. but men don't even register those necessarily as.
Men register, they just register skirts.
That's why the slang for women is skirts.
Oh, I know.
They don't care as long as you're showing leg
and there's easy access to your pussy area.
I know.
And they literally like any woman who's like relatively thin,
wearing a dress and like has done basic maintenance.
Yeah, you don't need to wear like a fugly almost $200 sun
dress.
Well, right.
And then the kind of like because it's like being hawked
by this like vaguely politically motivated lifestyle magazine,
I guess also the idea behind their marketing of the dress
was that it would also like signal not only like
your femininity, but that you are kind of like,
you know, inclined and trad and based,
but it's like, why the fuck would you wear something
to signal that you read this, like,
I wouldn't have dropped one, like if I was gonna
foray into fashion as the masterminds at EV Magazine,
you know, I would have maybe done a collection
of like different, you know, rather than having like
one distinct garment that everyone can look,
it's like high.
That also happens to be like super hideous.
That's super hideous, but then also, yeah,
so you're like an idiot with no taste
and you're like highly conformist,
but think you are special because you are like associated
with like some vaguely subcultural activity.
Yeah, you're an ideologically possessed NPC. Exactly.
Yeah.
Who thinks they're like a radical free thinker.
It's a massive red flag.
The red flag dress really.
They should call it.
It's like fucking scary.
Yeah.
I'd be so frightened if I saw a woman wearing that dress.
I would avoid her like the flag.
I want to sell those EV magazine hoes.
I want to human traffic them into sexual bondage to those
like New Jersey Eurocentric wig nets.
That's the fate they deserve.
I mean, it is.
Yeah, they are like, yeah, it's terrorism what they're doing
over there.
It's so awful.
Yeah, I hate to see them like they also hawk like weird It's terrorism what they're doing over there. It's so awful. Yeah.
I hate to see them like, they also hawk like weird,
like a birth control detox package,
which like I'm all for, I guess, you know, like,
you know, getting off hormonal contraception
and do think it's, oh.
God is not happy with you, Evie.
Yeah, there's a storm brewing.
You can't stop what's coming.
But yeah, maybe stick to supplements.
And then the woman who is there, I don't know, I see her.
I don't know her name.
She's like model.
Oh, Brittany Martinez.
Yeah, she's like a quote model.
She's a low fashion model.
And she's like, I have friends that work for Zimmerman.
And it's like, you know,
she has the stuff she's saying,
it's so also fucking crazy, you know.
Like, what are you bitches yammering on about?
And like, yeah, she's like wanting her.
Oh my God, I can already see the comments on this episode.
Sorry, I'm sorry.
They're just jealous.
I'm not, I don't. No, I jealous. I'm not, I don't, I'm really not.
Brittany Martinez is,
I've seen her posting before about how happily married
she is and stuff too.
Yeah, she's the one that had the,
marry someone that you're absolutely
over the moon attracted to
and you can't keep your eyes off of.
And it's like weird hostage photos of her
and her husband like on a beach.
If you yeah marry someone who like won't like won't indulge your like creepy attention
whoring desire to post pics of them on the internet and he's like a circus seal.
Yeah, yeah. Wow, it's really coming down out there.
Yeah, yeah. Wow, it's really coming down out there.
The heavens are unloading in misogynistic hatred.
Oh, wow.
Oh, no, I'm going to get sweepy like a baby.
The rain makes me so tired.
I have to go back to bed.
Well, I have to lie down because it's raining.
I got to go back to bed. Well, I have to lie down because it's raining.
Looks like it's about time for me to hit this.
It's like 6 PM.
I was wondering why it got so dark.
I know, storm cloud came over as we discussed some.
The red scare ASMR.
Sunshine yellow dress.
That is so gross, yeah, really bad.
I mean, mm-hmm.
My favorite sundress that I own,
actually I got a new, it's not,
it's really kind of a nightgown.
It was sort of more sold as like a beach cover up.
I won't gatekeep, you know what?
There's this French lingerie brand I like
called Fifi Chachnil.
And she makes this like kind of like,
it's looks like totally just like a nightgown.
It's not even, it's a very unstructured dress,
but it's made out of very nice, very light,
like French cotton.
And it has like a string, like a nice ribbon
and it's so cute.
And like, yeah, it's kind of like a baby doll nightgown
that you-
I wanna look a little like Jane Birkin
or Francois Hardy, RIP.
Yeah, RIP, RIP.
R.S. girl for the ages, had anxiety.
Huh?
I read on her Wikipedia that she had anxiety. She just like me for real, beautiful anxiety.
I don't know.
Not really a big sundress wearer, Francois Hardy,
kind of more of a.
No, no, she was like a.
More of a tomboyish.
A batonac.
Which by the way, okay, can I just say.
Blue jeans, kind of galia.
Obviously men like a sundress. a tomboyish. Beto neck. Which by the way, okay, can I just say. Blue jeans, kind of galia.
Obviously men like a sundress that signals
a sexual availability, blah, blah.
But speaking from experience,
I think men really honestly fuck with like,
and this is also a loaded term, but like a tomboy.
Like actually the move is kind of dressing
like a weird slob in the summer.
And I find men kind of respond to that also weirdly.
If you were like track, like kind of like track shorts
and like a tank top.
Yeah.
They'll like that too.
Beautiful.
They don't really need.
Good morning.
Yeah.
Mm. Show Bob's don't really need. Good morning. Yeah. Mm.
Mm.
Show bobs and vaginas.
Yeah, men, there's.
Men really just don't, it's not,
it's not for them, the son, the.
Men really, you know when men love you the most?
When you're feeling yourself?
No, when you're,
when you're recovering from the flu
and you have like a low grade fever No, when you're recovering from the flu
and you have like a low grade fever and are walking around with like snot leaking
out of your nose and you look ill.
Yeah.
And like you're about to fall down and die.
You really think?
Yeah, men love when women look weak and debilitated.
Sure.
Because it's all about rape.
I hate when my boyfriend points out
that I've drawn freckles on.
He's always like, oh, did you put your dots on?
And I'm like, I had some sun. I'm like, that is so rude for you to remark on
the fact that I have drawn dots on my face.
Can we not, can you not play along
and just tell me that I got some sun and I'm looking good?
Wow, you got a lot of sun from lying down all day
in your dark room, babe.
Did you go sunbathing?
They're so stupid.
They're so stupid, I love them.
And have no sense of aesthetics or style.
And they should be so lucky
that they don't own the consensus reality on.
Oh, I know, I know.
How women should dress and present themselves
and that they get some pushback from girls and gays.
Yeah, thank God.
Because we're true Chopin-Hauerians
and we're not clouded by horniness.
Yeah, exactly.
And we can actually see through
to the true aesthetic value of something.
Well, style is just really the sexiest thing. It's not really about
like the garment. Yeah. It's like what is sexy about a woman whether she's wearing a sundress or
like doing a sportier look in the summertime. A straight jacket. That's one of the hottest things
a woman can wear. Yeah, men love when you menstruate
through your white pajama pants.
And are kind of, yeah, look like you got bonked on the head
and can't function so good.
And you start drinking Robitussin to improve your mood.
No, but a sense of style is what I'm saying,
is like anyone can saying is like,
anyone can kind of like.
Damn.
And the EV Magazine sundress is like an antithesis
of it's like a void of style.
And there's so many bad decisions that were made
in its production.
And I mean, I'm not convinced it's not just a shein dress
that they like slapped another.
Isn't that?
Probably it's like, yeah, they,
you can probably find it on Alibaba.
Yeah.
Where I've gotten some very nice stretchy kind of like,
well, there's that Australian brand Daisy
that makes this white kind of like milk matey dress
that Bella Hadid's worn in the past
that I have one of that I love.
But I've gotten some nice dupes of Daisy stuff
on AliExpress actually.
If you just want like a shitty stretchy dress
to get fucked.
If you want a shitty stretchy dress
to get fucked on AliExpress.
Jesus Christ.
Sorry, I'm having a hard time hearing you because it's coming down so hard.
Because the Lord is not pleased.
The Lord finds our discussion disagreeable.
OK, should we pivot? I think maybe.
No, wait, fuck.
I was going to say something, but now I don't remember.
And I really want to say grab, but like there's nowhere to run.
Fuck, what was I going to say?
Something about
women in fashion.
Men really like it when you're effortlessly friendly
and agreeable and smile a lot and laugh at their jokes
and don't bust their balls or chisel away at their
masculinity or like peck their spleens. bust their balls or chisel away at their masculinity
or like peck their spleens.
It doesn't really matter what you're wearing.
Yeah.
And I would bet that men are on the whole pretty repelled
by the idea of a woman trying to intellectually and politically
compete with them by making a weird political statement through like a fashion garment.
Through their base sundress. Yeah, definitely. I mean, yeah, people were really, yeah, I saw, uh,
Brittany Martinez defending her choice of using rayon, saying that it was not a
synthetic fabric, like bamboo. I'm not, I don't want to split hairs here,
but like, you know what you did, bitch, you know, you know, it's a rayon ass
flimsy for a built in, also built in the built in bra for me is really like what I know
like I don't know sorry I I don't know I mean I obviously don't need a built-in bra because I
have aristocratic small breasts I love when people make online are talking to talk about how things
are how it's aristocrat like they like just make these like really like baby brain like it's a risk as small
as aristocratic like the way people have used and abused the term aristocratic well not
at all knowing what it means it's amazing yeah they just think it means like small or like something they saw on Tumblr or like not even
like you know on some like image account.
They think it's when you have espresso.
That tweet that was going around and it was like your aristocratic French girlfriend
who wears a Chanel suit and sips a cappuccino
and votes Marine Le Pen.
Yeah, and it's like an American girl wearing like,
Maget, like Sandro.
Men are so fucking stupid.
They're so stupid.
They're so stupid.
They don't know any, they don't know what's going on. It is literally like a an American girl who plays volleyball who got the major Sandro on clearance at Bloomingdale's and it's possibly even aqua.
And also those fucking tweet and she's a sock. I hate them. I mean, yeah, not, you know, I can't really
Yeah, not, you know, I can't really, not my thing.
Not my thing, really, unfortunately. Though I've seen them, some people can pull it off.
There's an exception that proves the rule.
I don't have anyone in mind even when I'm saying this.
I just know I've seen it and been like, ooh, maybe, maybe.
Maddie has a nice like actual Chanel jacket
that looks very like kind of like militaristic
and charming on her.
Yeah.
It's not giving quite that.
It's like just black.
It's not even tweed.
But yeah, but then she's at this like very like
touristy cafe.
The table's very overcrowded.
Yes.
Which is a weird detail that I noticed in the photo.
There's many like liquid receptacles on,
like why is she drinking, what's going on?
She's just like us for real,
she has so many different types of liquids.
And you can't even really tell if she's pretty or not
because she's holding a coffee mug obscuring her face.
Yeah.
You can see her voluminous hair.
She's pretty enough.
She'll do.
But men just don't care.
No, they literally don't.
They just don't care.
They're happy to have a whole,
hold the coffee cup over your face, who cares?
And the eternal war between men and women
is that they don't find us emotionally neutral
and intellectually capable enough
to weigh in on a topic as fraught as aesthetics,
but actually we truly do have the upper hand,
which is something that they'll never cop to or understand
because they're simply incapable.
I know.
And it's just like a painful truth
that we have to live with in private.
I tried to, sorry, I keep bragging about having a boyfriend,
but I was like, do you like, you know,
cause I do, you know, I was like,
I was like, do you like, what do you like for me?
You know, what would you, what do you like when I wear?
You know?
And he was, he was like, I don't know, like a skirt.
I was like, okay, so.
He was like, yeah, he had no like strong aesthetic
preference for what I wore.
You know, I'm like, trying to dress cute.
Couldn't make a difference at all.
Play around with different styles and different days.
Totally, yeah.
On the days you managed to get out of bed.
Exactly, I switched over to my summer,
because I had my summer stuff in storage,
and at some point a couple weeks ago,
I had enough willpower to make the switch.
And I was like, I'm wearing some of my summer clothes.
I was like, I'm wearing some of my summer clothes. I was like, I just do not care.
Why do you keep eating packages every day?
What's wrong with you?
What are you buying?
Men really hate it and are freaked out by the amount
of packages we get.
I know.
I think that it's a form of mental illness and guess what they're right, that they're
right about.
I know, I know.
I've been bad.
Me too.
I have so many returns that I have to accomplish before the week is out.
You got to do it.
I felt so it was so easy to I just walked into the real
roll, you know, and then it just really alleviated a lot of.
Yeah, these days you don't even have to pull out your card.
It automatically goes back.
They scan your thing.
It's so nice.
It's so easy.
They make it as easy as possible.
And I still am like, I have to have to reconsider some fucking stupid thing I bought.
I don't know where anyway, I wear the same things.
Yeah.
I just wear like pajamas every day anyway,
because I don't get out of bed.
So why am I shopping?
Why do women be shopping?
I don't know, it's like that Lacanian,
you know better than I do, that Lekhanian thing,
the object. The design, yeah.
The petite objet a.
Yeah.
I went shopping, I went to that mall in Chinatown.
Which one?
The Book Broadway, kind of, it has like,
the Ech House Lada and the boutique, Shope's.
Like the two bridges mall?
Yeah, yeah.
Me and Allison, when she said something really smart, where she was like, Eckhaus Lada and the boutique show. Like the two bridges mall. Yeah, yeah. Me and Alison, when she said something really smart,
where she was like, enough online shopping,
she was like, you have to get out in the world
and see what's real.
And I was like, that is so true.
So true.
And I actually did buy some very cute things
at some shops there.
Yeah, because I was engaging with them in a tactile way.
I was trying on things I maybe wouldn't be drawn to online. And I had a very fruitful time.
Just like likes being private now.
Exactly. You got to get out in the world and really, you got to
make your own decisions about what's real and what's good and
what you really like. Instead of just liking something because
everyone else liked it. It's, yeah, you got to really ask
yourself, what do I like?
It's true.
It's hard to know thyself.
One day at a time here on Elon Musk's ex,
formerly Twitter, we're learning a lot
about the human condition and ourselves.
Should we talk about this?
How long have we been going?
We did an hour and a half.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, we can talk about this.
We've got like a nice docket today, I think.
This old bitch.
Jill Simmonds?
I feel so crazy and adult because I can't hear anything.
Because of the rain. And it feels so, You are, Anna's't hear anything. Cause of the rain.
And it feels so.
You are, Anna's having an autism attack.
Oh my God, Anna's stimming you guys.
I don't even know what stimming is.
It's when you get overstimulated as an autistic person.
The rain, do you wanna move somewhere where you're less.
No, no, no, it's okay, I'm just gonna honestly.
Do you wanna put the headphones on?
Cause that's.
How do you.
I'm, I think they's... I'm not as...
I'm not hearing it as much as you are. It's very loud, yeah.
The rain.
Yeah, but it'll come.
I was just surprised for how long.
Feel the rain on your skin.
No one else can feel it for you.
Only you can let it in.
No one else can see the words on you.
I'm gonna ask the homeless kids to go to the bathroom. Um, yeah, I need one of those like weighted anxiety blankets or something.
No, I'm fine.
Yeah, you need a thunder jacket.
I'm gonna pee actually.
Okay, that sounds good.
Whatever, yeah.
Helps you gather your thoughts.
Yeah. Yeah, no, I'm fine now.
Because you had to pee, the rain was also probably not.
So true. Some weird like Proustian, Freudian, Lacanian intersection of energies.
Something's going on, yeah.
Okay, Jill Cement. but do not know how to pronounce this American name. Jill Seament is a, yeah, wrote a memoir a long time ago.
Two memoirs.
Yes, first one, the 90s?
96.
96, called Half a Life, about her,
I'll admit it, pretty steep age gap relationship
with her husband who she met as a teenager
when she was an art student of him.
He is an artist I guess of some repute.
His name is Arnold Menchus.
Yeah, I guess.
Kind of hard to pronounce names, it was meant to be.
You know, yeah.
He was married at the time that they met
and kind of like a, yeah, philanderous artsy type.
He had two teenage children.
Yeah, and she was his young student
who in this first memoir, Half a Life,
yeah, she's sort of revised and updated into a new memoir that is forthcoming called Consent
that sort of after his death reevaluates the, I guess, power dynamics between them.
Yeah, of course end of his life. He was her husband.
So people really frown upon age gap relationships in this day and age, but one benefit of entering into an age gap relationship
with a much older man is that he will probably die before you
and then you can quote, reframe the,
take back the narrative and throw him
and his memory under the bus to sell copies of your book.
Okay, well here's my, okay.
This article disturbed me greatly.
Yes, it was like truly evil.
And my most charitable read, right, is like.
She's trying to sell books.
Well, okay, so she's still, he's, he's 30 years older than her.
She's in her 60s, I guess he died in his 90s
Okay, she's 71 and then he died. I don't know a decade ago of leukemia when he was 93. Okay. All right
so she all day F and
maybe I
Guess like does she need the money?
Possibly, okay if she needs the money
the money? Possibly. Okay, if she needs the money to cook maybe slightly cynical book deal, I'm willing to concede also like that the New York crimes kind of like editorialized
maybe this interview that they did with her and maybe the book itself is I'm not going
to read it. Don't care. But it's like it's possible it's a little more nuanced than they
make it seem because they're like, you know, trying to frame it in a certain way and maybe she just needed the money.
That's like, also like, that gets clicks.
Yeah, exactly.
Drives traffic.
But that's my most, yeah, that's like my most charitable read on it.
The like tragic thing about it.
Yeah, I just kind of like feel bad for her because her husband is dead and her memories
are poisoned by this like new paradigm. Well it's very clear reading the article that she
and her husband actually had a pretty good and long lasting relationship. Yeah, no.
And were married for many years
in spite of his history of philandering and womanizing.
And that she doesn't actually object
to age gap relationships
and that she doesn't actually have a problem
with the relationship as it transpired.
And she's merely like reframing the narrative to suit kind
of the trendy new moral standards of the age.
Right.
Because she needs money as you say.
Yeah, if she doesn't need the money, this is like truly beyond the pale.
Like I don't know why the fuck you would do this.
Yeah. Ever. truly be on the pale. Like, I don't know why the fuck you would do this ever. And
not that even like, you know, the money is a great excuse, but that's at least something I
can like wrap my mind around is kind of making them. Well, I think that's something that her
dead husband would certainly forgive her for. While she was writing Consent, Cement occasionally
wondered what meshies would make of it if he were still alive. The thing that would trouble him the most, she said, is that I wrote about his
failures and how he had given up as an artist.
That is the worst.
That is horrible.
Yeah.
Oh my God.
That makes me sick, dude.
And honestly, I would fucking hate that so much.
I just want to throw some shit about me after I'm done.
That's like that's someone that, well, that's like what,
the real thing that I kept thinking was like,
you know, they spent a lot, you know, they were married.
And she like, that you can be married to someone
for decades, you can like care for them as they die.
You can like watch them.
I just kept thinking, like I kept imagining her like
caring for him as he was dying.
And like even maybe, I don't know what transpired
but like him passing, like even seeing someone
you love passing into another realm,
like having like this really insane like experience
as someone of their like life and death and then they pass
away and then you're like, actually I've been thinking about the power to do it.
I know.
It was like, what kind of sick fuck?
I know.
Like, why?
Have you ever tried not narrativizing or mythologizing your marriage?
Actually since we're talking a lot about your boyfriend on this episode, he said something last night
that I really liked that was not his idea,
but that he repeated very faithfully and articulately,
which is like in Christianity, the whole concept of marriage
is that it becomes a church of its own,
like a church in miniature.
It's a sacred thing.
It's a sacred bond that you have with someone
that you don't, that transcends death.
It's like.
So I really, really hope that you are right
and that she really needs the money
and he's looking down on her in heaven
and being like, get the bad girl.
There was a point where she talks about she's a novelist
and she's written a lot of books that basically make use of autobiographical
material in a fictional manner and like I would be offended by the part where
she like repurposes some of their deathbed conversations into fictional dialogue
for her previous novel.
I mean, that at least, that I have more,
I don't know.
I think you can take creative liberties
and even if your work is like as auto-fictional as it gets,
at least you have like the dignity of fiction.
You have an outlet.
To actually take-
A plausible deniability.
It's just, that's valid, whatever.
You're an artist, you can express,
you can draw from your life experiences,
but to pen a full ass memoir,
giving your account of re-narrativizing the power dynamic of your memory.
And the interesting part is also how like, again, we haven't read either of these memoirs,
but how seemingly lazy and low effort the second memoir is because she basically says in the article that she copy pasted entire sections
of the previous memoir in order to like recontextualize
and revise them according to her suddenly
like newly unearthed memories and like the pivotal scene
she writes, I unbutton the top three buttons
of my peasant blouse, my sundress.
Yeah, my Eevee sundress.
Cross the ink splatter floor.
I detached the bra from my Eevee sundress.
And said, you're so baste.
And said, hey, Anon, come over here and give me a kiss.
Oh.
Yeah, yeah, and then.
Across the ink splattered, Florin kissed him. Cimet, now an acclaimed novelist,
wrote in her 1996 memoir, Half a Life.
But notice the pivotal detail that she came onto him.
Yeah.
Which would seem to complicate matters a little,
but like in the era of Me Too,
every gray area becomes like a black and white thing.
Because he was her teacher,
because he was older, because blah, blah.
When Samantha wrote Half a Life,
she and Meshe's had been together for more than 20 years.
He was the first reader on everything she wrote.
After reading the scene, he had quibbled with a few phrases
but agreed on the key fact, she instigated the kiss.
Yeah, I mean, that's like,
here's another complicating detail that comes toward the end.
If I can even find it.
Samantha dropped out of high school to become an artist
and after taking Meshe's class,
she moved to New York to pursue her dream,
but instead ended up working as a nude model
at a peep show near Times Square.
When she returned home after four months,
broke and defeated, she went to see Meshe's
and they resumed their affair.
And this comes like after the obligatory sob story
of how she had like a troubled and turbulent upbringing.
story of how she had like a troubled and turbulent upbringing. Right. So yeah.
Yeah, I mean, highly fraught. Relitigating your age gap relationship. Yeah, and she dishonored the memory of your late husband is basically as low as it gets. Like, I mean, even if you need the money, like how much could that book
do even have been, you know?
Yeah, like who's actually going to read this book?
And she she talks about how her objective with the first memoir was not so much
to protect him from accusations of being a predator,
but to protect her from herself, from accusations of being a predator, but to protect herself from accusations
of being labeled as a victim or prey,
which is bullshit because clearly at the time
it didn't occur to her.
Yeah, and like in her career as a writer,
that it seems like a remarkable fact of her life
that her husband was 30 years her senior
that was of some interest from a memoir perspective.
That is what probably made that.
I mean, I bet that book's probably in Deith.
It's like, that is something that I would be intrigued
to read about kind of in honest way honest way about like an age cap relationship
like that I think there is something inherently interesting about it sure
and then yeah there's quotes from like her random friends being like she wouldn't I knew she would
she would knock this one out of the park she's not that kind of girl would girl. Would he have been upset if I had written
that he had kissed me?
No, he wouldn't have been.
She said, I wanted to show my own empowerment
more than to hide from his faults.
But it's not about empowerment, obviously.
Like I said, at the time, it didn't occur to people
that age gap relationships were problematic.
It's about vanity and pride. And I don't mean that in a
mean or shady way. But as Laura Kipnis put it in one of her best essays on rape and campus culture,
it's like you young women back then derived a sense of power from seducing older prominent men and stealing them from
their wives.
Yeah, which is kind of exactly what you did.
Yeah, and in this day and age, all of your power comes from playing the victim.
Well, it's interesting even that she would invoke the kind of like predator, the
dichotomy of predator and prey rather than like the way more like nuanced and
complicated like webs of hurt and power that are intrinsic in human relationships
that are just not so like you know like she also was like a woman who home wrecked someone's like life.
Yeah.
And, you know, she talks about how at the time when she met him, he was married.
He had these two kids.
He was also carrying on an affair with another woman who she later became friends with.
Oh, my God. Well, something I've noticed,
though in this case, it's not so novel
because of the age gap,
but in couples closer to age,
I feel like when the wife dies,
the man will often die soon after.
Yeah, or immediately remarry.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Um, but if a husband dies, I just see like women be outliving men.
Well, yeah.
And like part of that is due to life expectancy. Or all of it is, I guess, is
what I'm talking about. But the life expectancy disparity, I really see having
I don't know, I feel like women just have more friends,
they have more reason to go on after their husband dies.
And when a man's wife dies, they kind of just like-
Like volunteering and donating to charity.
Or just hanging out with their girl,
like they go golden girls mode and just like, you know,
women can kind of endure in this way that like,
I find it's often the case that a man's wife dies and he just withers on the vine,
dies, perishes completely, can't go on.
I can just suck the life out of him
and kept him from having friends.
Well, I'm kidding.
It's his own damn fault, but yeah,
we're just like a woman becomes something for a man
that is so much more intrinsic to his life than I feel like
men almost are for women.
Though it would seem to be the, you know, conventional knowledge would kind of tell
us the opposite, but I feel like-
Meaning what?
Well, that women are so preoccupied with their relationships and the men in their life and
blah blah and like, you know, so devoted.
I mean, one thing that I've anecdotally noticed is that when women I know are plunged into a deep depression,
it's usually over interpersonal,
primarily romantic problems.
And when men are plunged into deep depression,
it's usually over career issues, yeah.
And there's like a longstanding right wing debate
on whether men or women are the hopeless
romantics.
And the idea is that women are actually much more pragmatic and utilitarian, which is partly
why they go on living after their husbands die.
I don't think that that contradicts the idea that women can be hopeless romantics
and very often are, it's just like they have no other choice.
They have to go on because very often,
at least in the past, they had children
and their lives were about like resource accumulation,
resource learning.
And maybe, no, I was about to say that women
are better at lying to themselves,
but I actually don't think that's true.
But I think like
Yeah, like women's romanticism
Has a pragmatic element that they are not even
necessarily mindful of like because of the biological kind of realities of their needs is sort of
You know procreate and secure their safety. There's like this the mechanism mechanism or whatever that like causes them to pair bond or to feel, you know,
to use sort of like a cynical red-pilled language around it. Like, yeah, that the men, women choose to sort of procreate
or spend their lives with make them feel safe
in a pragmatic way that like helps to facilitate
an experience of loving them.
But that's, I don't think you can just like uncouple
necessarily like romantic attachment from pragmatic
decisions that women make about their lives either.
pragmatic decisions that women make about their lives either. You know?
Yeah, and very often when you make these like
pragmatic functional decisions,
it comes at great emotional and spiritual cost to yourself.
It comes at your own like existential expense,
which nobody talks about because they only see
the kind of
surface outward effects or consequences of such an action.
Like putting on your sun dress.
But either way, it's like a very sad story because I'm not going to light up your
apartment. There's basically two alternatives.
Either she's like a craven opportunist
who never really loved her husband or anyone.
I just find that so hard to believe.
Or she's really fallen on hard times
and she's desperate to make a buck
and has been reduced to this by the evil New York crimes
via Complex.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, there's just no, I, yeah,
it's very hard for me to imagine a reality
where she felt some kind of like,
because it's so foreign to me,
where she felt like some deep sense of like personal conviction of
like writing yet again another memoir about her marriage. I don't like in general but like people
combing through likes I still have a very hard time wrapping my brain around people who primarily
write memoirs about their personal romantic lives.
Yeah.
I'll grant that I can be horribly wrong
and I'll grant that there are also exceptions to the rule.
It seems like a very easy
and opportunistic way of making art.
Yeah.
And also this woman does have a prolific body of work
that she really only got underway
when she was in her 40s, which is impressive.
And she is primarily known as a fiction novelist.
So maybe there's more to her.
I'm sure, yeah.
No, I think, yeah.
I don't want to like discount her whole creative career
because she's, I mean, also like boomer, you know, like,
I don't necessarily associate old age with like wisdom.
Unfortunately, I think like people get old
and they get like stupid and adult.
And like, yeah, like can lie to themselves.
And like, maybe she's really lonely
and wants to have like a book.
She like needs some kind of validation from her writing.
And she's no longer young and hot,
so she has to derive value from elsewhere.
Well, she hasn't been young and hot for decades
at this point, like I'm sure she's,
but like maybe she is not just down bad financially,
but maybe she just wants like, you know,
like she knows that this is sort of a way to selling books and
like actually likes maybe the prestige of moving merchandise. Though I yeah, I just
wouldn't like, I mean, me and you both are such lazy, mentally ill, maladjusted people.
Exactly. So like, it would take so much for me
to write a book, you know?
That the thought of doing one that like disgraces
the memory of my late husband is like,
that wouldn't be what I would write the book about.
Like, you know, like I can't even write a fucking,
I can barely write a story.
Like I can't write, you know, I can't,
the words are not flowing out of me.
Like I'm not, I don't have a writing practice
in the way that this woman might.
No, come on, I'm gonna put you on blast
because as I told you already,
and as I will now tell the listeners,
the story that you read it the Tao Lin reading was
Impeccable and brilliant. Thank you. It was very well written
It was pay it was painful to write and I felt ashamed for writing it
I could tell I could tell and I was like you shouldn't feel ashamed because it's like awesome, but
But yeah, no that wasn't easy and that's literally something I had to force myself
You should feel ashamed as an artist.
Exactly.
Anytime you put something out.
Like you should.
Like why did you do this?
Yeah.
You have to really...
What am I seeking?
What am I looking for?
Exactly.
Why did I do this?
Yeah, I agreed to do the reading in part because it would force me to have a deadline to produce
something.
So I was like, okay, I'm trying to undertake some form of a writing practice,
and this is a way of generating something.
But then once I wrote it, I was like, why is this?
It's a story you wrote.
What's wrong with you?
Oh!
Why did you write this?
Do you think Wellbeck is like,
why did I fucking write this book?
Fuck!
He's like, this book's gross. You think he ever thinks that?
I mean, I'm sure all the time he seems like a person
who's overcome with shame and regret and remorse.
Yeah.
Or maybe not, maybe I'm giving him too much credit.
I don't know.
I'd like to think, yeah.
I mean, I think I've been coming around lately to this idea that like,
the artist or like someone who pursues like an artistic path is actually like a shameful person.
Who like, who shouldn't be like valorized, you know, like, they're an art or artistes,
they're a writer there, you know, like, I think that's been a wrong, the wrong approach, kind of, I think that we should have more of like a, yeah, like a So in some ways and that they fall under a bell curve and the vast majority of them are mid.
Well, really, yeah.
Some are very good, some are very bad, and the very bad ones, by virtue of being very
bad, almost become very good.
Well, that's why I think, yeah, if there was like more shame associated with like pursuing
that, there would be less people doing it,
which would be a net positive,
because the people who would undertake
kind of artistic projects would feel very called to do it
in spite of all of the shame and stigma associated with it.
But instead people do it because they want
the book deals and the valor and the prestige
and the blah blah, like that just ends up producing inevitably like really like crummy stuff more often than not.
Yeah at some point she says in a marriage you have the shared mythology and you have to share the
mythology while your partner's still alive but once your partner dies the story becomes yours.
I feel like that sentence alone tells you everything you
need to know about this woman, that she's like the chief architect and mastermind of all these
mythologies and stories. Which is, you know, in a way corrupt because she's inflicting a
she's inflicting a narrative onto a reality
that's much more complicated and ambiguous.
Yeah, which it seems like her first book might reflect. I mean, I do wanna actually do an out.
I love when we come up with fun little ideas that we follow
through on. But I am interested in reading that Didion Eve Babbitt's correspondence
book. That's like the it girl literary book. That I am curious about.
What's the author's name? It's is there an author?
I thought it was literally like it's a girl who apparently is a fan of the pod.
Oh, Lily and Tolick.
OK, I don't know. And.
The way that that I'm very I'm also very interested in that book
and even possibly having this girl on the pod
because I suspect that there's more to the book
than the way it's been marketed,
which is like two different types of it girls
in the literary world.
One had big tits and one had small tits.
One had a eating disorder and they're chopping it up.
And one was a sex addict.
One employed Harrison Ford and the other one
fucked Harrison Ford.
So true.
And I really hated that framing that one of the girls
who was a publicist or promoter of the book had
that was like, it girls get your copy.
Because it's actually so I hate when like woke leftist types
invoke the violence and harm of language,
but it really is violent and harmful to portray Joan Didion
and Eve Babbitts as literary it girls.
Eve Babbitts was of socialite whose writing was not as nearly as strong as Didion and Eve Babbitts as literary it girls. Eve Babbitts was of social age,
whose writing was not nearly as strong as Didion's
and was kind of a fraud and hack.
Yes, totally agree.
And you know, basically, I think it's fair to say that
about Eve Babbitts.
She was like taking her tits out
and being a fucking disreputable skank.
But Joan Didion, yeah, it was like a staunchly conservative, like, spur.
Openly racist. Yeah.
Autist.
Female one of the best female autists to ever do it.
Whose chief virtue is her basically conservative constitution.
Yeah, that's what gives her the immac pros and not again the way that she wore like
Exactly that's a woman you would never see in a sundress absolutely not no way. Yeah
Yeah, there's nothing it girl about Joan Didion
No besides like I guess her being cool in the classic definition of the word meaning cold.
And I and I love her. And we love her. I really do. I like and like, I'm looking at Oh my god.
And like I'm looking at oh my god.
What female Capricorn did in what's Babbitz makes sense. Let's see. Um, do you have a guess?
Pisces Aquarius May 13th Taurus. Yeah, makes sense. Love the finer things. Like her big, huge tits.
Her supple mommy milkers.
Yeah, I guess that's a Taurus, yeah.
But even Babbitt's, who's writing-
Whatever, I don't mean to hate on Babbitt's.
I'm not trying to hate, yeah,
but she was writing in a more honest way
at a time where the moral standards
were less annoying and like mimetic.
She was good at what she was great at what she did,
which is being like a big titty party girl
like with some vague literary aspirations
that she didn't really need.
Joan Deedin was a real writer,
E. Babbitts was a socialite with like a writing practice.
I don't think she would disagree with that.
No, no, probably not.
I like, yeah, which is also fun.
Like I'm interested in reading writing
from those people too.
I don't need you to be like a, you know,
like Joan Didion was a novel, like a journalist.
True, like, you know, She was interested in like a reportage
and had fiction as well,
but I think her strongest writing
is probably her nonfiction
because she had the moral clarity.
Through lines that come through in Joan Didion's writing
is her active contempt for her own
feminine folly and vanity.
Yeah.
And it's actually very weird and thorny and complicated
because you can tell that she leans into it a lot
but is also trying to distance herself from it.
Well, did you ever read the year of magical thinking?
That's her like grief memoir after her husband died.
I have, yeah.
I haven't.
But that be part in part because Didion's kind of like
constitutional coldness.
Yeah.
Though people like rape about it and obviously it's like,
you know, a canonical text of like, you know, grief.
I was never so drawn to it, I guess, because I felt like she wasn't
going to be radically vulnerable in it. She would still kind of use
the trappings of style and sentence structure to like narrativize, yeah, this
experience that she had, but that there wasn't going to be. And part of that is
because she never acknowledged that she had an eating disorder. She just was like
never, that was never ever anything like.
Well now it's fashionable to acknowledge
that you have an eating disorder
because it's like radically honest
and you get to kind of backhandedly humble brag.
And back in the day it was a point of pride
to be like effortlessly thin while never acknowledging
that you actually had anorexia and possibly bulimia.
never acknowledging that you actually had anorexia and possibly bulimia.
I read that book when I got out of the hospital.
I talked about this on the pod.
I got out of the hospital after my COVID situation
and was reading that book
and people always overwhelmingly say
that it's her worst book.
And I don't know, maybe because I was weakened
and debilitated.
And you're an earth sign.
And what?
Yeah, and it brought something out in me
because as I said, many, many episodes ago,
reading her memoir of grief about the loss of her husband
and then foreshadowing the subsequent loss of her daughter
was the first time in my life where I fully broke down
and properly mourned the death of my father.
Wow.
And he was like in the room with me.
And only Joan Didion,
who I've historically and wrongfully dismissed
on the strength of her supporters, brought that out of me.
Well, that's amazing.
I mean, it was like an amazing psychedelic epiphany.
And I think that there are probably many flaws in that book.
I mean, I don't read books looking for flaws either.
I'm not hypercritical in that way.
In a book, I'm really basically, if it has a compelling voice, I'm willing to forgive
a lot of things, which I'm sure it does.
And I'm sure she's being as authentic as she can to her experience.
Well, there are a lot of parts in the book
where she basically...
To her credit, she's a very discreet person.
So memoir doesn't feel like...
But no, that's the central conflict of Joan Didion
is that she's actually a very domineering
and formidable person who has no discretion at all,
but because she's so classy and sophisticated
as a pro stylist, not as like a style icon,
she's able to kind of smuggle it under everyone's noses.
And she has a very strong will to power that comes across.
Like even in, I forgot whether it was in Slouching
Toward Bethlehem or the White Album
where she talks about her, or maybe it's in one of those
essays, she talks about how her kind of feminine frailty
and diminutive stature allowed her access
into all these spaces.
Underestimated her and disclosed things to her
because she was like an anorexic female.
Yeah, and they couldn't, they didn't refer to them
and she might be a fed or a dox or whatever.
Even in that there's this late and very hostile humblebrag,
look how small and pretty I am.
I don't know if she was making a,
I think in that same portion she says like,
she says like you should be,
people forget that like a writer
or a journalist is like always looking for someone
to betray or something.
She doesn't say that,
but there's something like to that effect of like,
people forget that about her because of her like,
not her prettiness.
Knowing and noble.
Yeah.
But her self criticism,
which is actually kind of a backhanded
self flattery, which in the hands of a skilled writer
and high level intellectuals such as Joan Didion
is not only forgivable, but incredibly endearing.
Right.
Well, yeah, and I bet not untrue
that there was something about her
that she did probably have a quality about her
that made people disclose things to her
that they wouldn't otherwise,
which is what made her a good journalist,
which is something that not everybody has.
Some people really freak people out
and they don't wanna talk to them.
And to be elegant and demure and I guess disarming
And to be elegant and demure and I guess disarming
is, yeah, for her line of work was absolutely a strength.
She's kind of a ruthless and calculating reporter who is distancing herself from her dainty femininity.
Interesting. who is distancing herself from her dainty femininity.
Interesting. While somehow back-handedly enhancing it
as they enhanced Trump's misdemeanor with his felonies.
Yeah.
For sure.
But that's why I hated Didion for a long time.
But it's also her truth.
Like she's like when you are, okay,
like she was just a tight, she was.
No, it's true, but in the hands of a formidable storyteller
like Didion, it is awesome.
In the hands of her lackeys and pretenders,
it's mundane and pathetic.
I know, I know.
Because who the fuck are you?
Totally.
But yeah, like I do think you can't like ignore yourself.
Yeah.
I guess, you know, and if you're like, I don't know.
That's something I think about a lot is that like,
your people, the way in which people's souls are embodied
and form is the way in which they experience themselves
in the world and being petite.
So I don't know.
It's like, yeah, I don't know.
If you are small, you have a different,
the way that I asked Sailor about,
if I thought his tallness gave him
kind of this benevolent perspective.
I think Didion's smallness gave her a kind of like,
you know, mouse.
Critical perspective?
Mouse, like, you know, like it gave her something, you know.
Chip on her shoulder.
Chip on her shoulder, sure.
Contempt for humanity.
But also like a way of like,
yeah, also like granted her access under the guise of like,
she couldn't have been some like Amazonian, you know.
She couldn't have been Eve Babitz.
Voluptuous beauty.
Exactly, she could have never.
With her tigle bitties.
Eve Babitz could have never done what Joan Didion did.
Eve Babitz is the girl who logs other women
in her sundress and Joan Didion is the gatekeeper
of the female cartel who disapproves of Eve Babbitt.
And I guess they famously had kind of
a vaguely contentious relationship.
I guess that's what that book is about.
Like Poglia and Sontag.
Curious about reading, yeah.
I'm very curious about the book
because there's another book that I read years ago
that I truly love and highly recommend
called Sontag and Kale by a guy called Craig Seligman,
who's like a gay guy of arts and letters.
For sure.
And it was a very-
Too crotchety ass book.
Super arbitrary and random
because like Sontag and Kale were of the same era,
but had virtually nothing to do with one another.
But somehow it works.
Yeah.
And it's an amazing piece of biography.
It would be so, I was just, it made me that way.
Well, it's great.
We have the pod so we can really, you know,
tell our own tales, our own narrative,
but like our last name is being so like complicated,
unpronounceable, it really guards us from them
being like a catchy and necrous.
So far, like that does not, that is not rolling off the tongue.
And no one's trying to, yeah.
This anorexic actress from succession
and this other anorexic stay at home mom.
Just one season.
And they were so different yet so alike.
Primarily because they both stayed in bed all day.
And were haunted by ancestral trauma.
God, I could go on about these broads forever.
Well, we should do an app, we should save it.
Because we did two, we're coming up on 217.
Jesus, you bloopies, you call me a misogynist,
but I love women so much.
We should do, yeah, let's take ourselves to task
on that one.
Wait, we should do what?
I'll text Caitlin, do you wanna,
I'll text Caitlin Phillips and get a copy of that book.
I'm sure she's pulling this straight.
I think we should just have Lily on.
Oh yeah, I'm down.
I know, but what if we don't like the book
and then we wanna-
Okay, we should read the book first.
She's scribbling it in her notebook.
I'm writing it in my planner.
Cause I forget, cause of my brain damage.
All right. Well, see you.
See you in hell.
See you in hell. You