All the best from Just Saying in 2024

Everyone else is doing it!

Currently, annual paid subscriptions to Just Saying are only $30! The annual price will go up to $50 after the first of the year, so if you want full access to all my most controversial and personal essays and podcasts, jump on it now! Monthly subs are, and will stay, at $5/month. Paid subscribers also have thread-starting privileges in the chat, which is currently hardly active at all because I rarely start threads. Maybe you should!

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My very nontraditional tree this year. It’s a long story.

In the past year or so that I’ve revived this thing and started writing regularly again, I’ve met tons of great, strange, fascinating people who write about great, strange, fascinating things, and this little newsletter that I never intended to even share or especially make occasionally-paywalled has grown a ton as a result. Thank you so much to everyone who has decided to subscribe, because I tell you hwat, I never really did expect that many people to be interested enough in my silly little stories or crackpot ideas to do that or, especially, to pay for it! You guys are the best and I love you.

Without further ado, here are some of my most popular essays of the year, as well as a couple extras from earlier in the year that newer subscribers may not have seen. Feel free to leave some of your own faves that you’ve written, or even roundups like this, in the comments for us to peruse!

Here is the first thing I published on Just Saying¹ about a longtime fear of mine stemming from a very anxiety-filled childhood:

The end of the world consists partly of those dark clouds, taunting the pale blue sky behind that it pushes aside, forcing our Chinese Golf-loving neighbors downstairs in the courtyard to play in it's shade. It is not, however, the entirety of the end of the world; the dark clouds are only the first omen of the coming Doomsday.

When said Doomsday will occur, I do not know. I'm sure the clouds know, the trees in the distance that dance with the dark clouds, laughing at us down below, thinking, knowing, that we're living on borrowed time, I'm sure they know. They must, otherwise they wouldn't laugh so hard lately. The trees have such cruel voices these days.

I would later flesh out this whole “end of the world” thing that’s been haunting me forever in a later post:

When I was 8 or 9, an older friend told me some crazy theory she saw on the show Sightings about the world ending in May of 2000. Of course I believed her immediately and accepted this without question, and I got off the phone to go fold towels in the bathroom, because that was the first thing I could think of to do to prepare: start being a more obedient daughter. I definitely got a strange look from my mom after coming out of the bathroom, done proactively folding towels with a terrified look on my face for no apparent reason.

That very specific fear lasted a few years, strangely coloring a significant chunk of my childhood with the ever-present dread of “knowing” I wouldn’t make it to 17. I very literally believed this would happen. I also developed an adjacent irrational fear of neighboring South Dakota and Mount Rushmore, where I had understood the “source” of whatever would cause the end of the world to be. Like with tornadoes, if the fear in the background got to be too loud, I’d flip on the little TV in my room and distract myself with sitcom reruns and Jay Leno. Since I refused to tell anyone what I was afraid of, I got well-practiced at acting normal while I was a near-constant electric ball of anxiety on the inside for years on end.

Now for the most popular in terms of views and reactions:

When it comes to dating, it’s just that, well, things really have changed in very specific ways over the past 15 or so years. And I think the dudes complaining about it are mostly right about the reason why.

Phaedra Starling’s Schrödinger’s Rapist [PDF], published in 2009, has gotten more attention recently in the little corner of Substackistan that I tend to inhabit. The other day I restacked a fifteen-year-old post I wrote responding to Starling’s essay from an old blog I imported over here, because rereading it reminded me viscerally of what it was like back then in that old internet-centered, 3rd-wave feminism world, and I believe it's directly related to this phenomenon.

This was my most popular essay this year by… a lot. The reason is probably because I was critical about feminism while also being a woman and that combination of things tends to get a lot of engagement, for better or worse. Oh well, we all need a schtick, and this has been mine since 2008. It’s probably not going anywhere. Call me a pickme if you want.

The Sexless Escort Service was my send most-read essay, probably because it’s an absurd proposal that made everyone angry:

Basically, this would be an escort service² — but yes, without sex. To leave sex out of it might sound like a silly idea if half the reason for the service’s existence is to prepare young, awkward men for relationships with women that will likely include it, but in reality, those things eventually just come naturally with the confidence and the right person. The goal here would be for women to use their skills with compassion and empathy to help train men on how to be attractive in all ways that naturally lead a woman to want to have sex with him in the first place. It would help boost his confidence. If all you care about is merely getting laid, then don’t use this pretend service that will probably never exist. Easy! Go find a Tate or whomever. I’m sure they’ll tell you how to peacock and neg just right to get some 8.3 into your bed for the night.

[…]

[T]he women wouldn’t be coaching men on how to be men, they would be coaching them on how to both act decent in society, which, not to sound sexist, I think women tend to be a little better at intuiting (and probably more likely formally educated to be), and also in a way that attracts women, coming straight from the horse’s mouth. The women are being paid to be honest with these men and, ideally, the service would include a thorough compatibility check to ensure that the pairings were as similar in temperament and outlook as possible and matched around what each man would want to look for in a real-life woman outside the “practice” scenarios — someone who would be both suited toward him, and also realistic. The service would try its best to ensure that the women signing up for this job wouldn’t simply be in it to infiltrate and ideologically brainwash their mentees into whatever woke neo-feminism they subscribe to that week, but rather women who both understand and share common values with the men with whom they’re paired so that no lectures or eggshell-walking need occur.

That led to a fun conversation between myself and

Walt Bismarck

about the idea:

Sexless Escorts and the Incel Question

Next we have my long-ass inquiry into whether or not Tony Soprano is actually hot at all, contra another writer who insisted he was.

I’ve been watching this show through the lens of “would I date this man,” and the number one reason why my answer is “absolutely not” as I have just finished the final episode is that he’s just so damned mean. And I’m not even talking about murdering his best friends or breaking unnecessary kneecaps and shit — when it comes to that, I see the mob shit more as an ethically self-contained unit. Most people on that side of the mob world have chosen their place in it, agreed to the terms, and usually have whatever it is coming to them.

What I mean is that he talks to his wife and his various mistresses like they’re contemptible idiots almost all of the time. If we’re only talking about Season One Tony like Shannon says in the footnotes, I really can’t see how we get the impression that he’s at all interested in women as people because most of what he does is cut them all down, call them names, and treat them like whores. He doesn't start showing positive, genuine, sustained, nonsexual interest in any women until later seasons (post-coma Tony is a noticeably improved character, at least in some ways). He’s nice to his daughter, but is that how low the bar is? Damn.

This concluded with another conversation about it with Walt, because it’s The Sopranos.

Why Tony Soprano and JD Vance are hot

Here, I go into what I think about “NLOGs” and “pickmes” and my history with both:

While I used to be the dreaded pickme, I have reframed my perspective since then:

It’s not that I don’t like “other girls”; it’s that I don’t really like spending time with superficial, mean, or proudly incurious people. Men can be, and are, many of these things, and I don’t like, hang out with, or date the men with those traits, either. Women, in my experience, tend to grow into ourselves as we age and develop actual personalities that keep us from continuing our patterns of adopting men as our only hobbies or goals, whether we were doing it as a pickme, NLOG, or a girly girl — because all of them are vying for attention, from men or other women, just in different ways and using different methods. And that, I think, is why most of us tend to outgrow the pickme behavior and eventually find ourselves either in more mature female friendships, or wanting to be and beginning to actively seek them out again. While it may not seem like there are many girls out there like you, there actually are. You just have to get rid of the idea that you’re so special. Lots of other people are, too, unfortunately for us Elder Millennials who were raised to believe we were the most special (I’m still working on that one).

I’ve got another one in the drafts right now about how NLOGs (distinct from Pickmes) are good, ackshually. Stay tuned.

The next most popular piece of the year is one I wrote in about an hour and fired off spur of the moment, which seems to be how these things work sometimes. It’s about the hot guy in high school who didn’t know he was hot (and how I got to kiss him 15 years later):

He went on to explain that he was raised in a very religious family, described it as an actual cult, and said that he was forbidden from dating and as a result, never really thought of himself that way or looked at other girls that way back then. He also didn’t remember saying hi to me that day in the hallway, because yes, I definitely asked.

I went on to tell him about the way that the girls would talk about him and how everyone thought that he was just too cool for them and wouldn’t even try, thinking there was no way he’d be interested. He was stunned. He had literally no idea.

Then we have this one, where I attempt to explain that all women really want in a man is confidence and competence, and use an example of my ex-boyfriend fighting his roommate and my paradoxical attraction to him after the fact as an example that doesn’t seem like it would make sense at first, but I think it does.

I think that if I had to come up with an answer on the spot for my original question (what do women want?) I’d boil it down to confidence and capability. Chris fighting Sean wasn’t really about the fact that he fought him; it was more about the self-assuredness he had in his ability do so, and the responsibility he felt for taking care of a situation that was irritating the hell out of everyone. And, looking back, the fact that Chris never really hit Sean and instead used his considerable strength to restrain, instead, probably allowed me to more easily justify the aggression I witnessed and my bewildered and heightened attraction after the fact.

Capability is next. If you have a thing you’re good at, that’s, well, very sexy. And it really doesn’t matter much what that thing is, just that you have one. Being good at beating people up is… certainly a thing… but consider “groupies” for a minute: they get a bad rap, but the reason they follow these dudes around all over the place is because there is something magical and deeply alluring about watching someone be good at something, especially something as emotionally evocative as a musical instrument or singing voice. When I was a teenager, this thing was driving. It sounds silly, but driving was still a novelty when you’re a teenager, and I was far from the only girl I knew who felt that way, and I still see women say this online. Watching guys drive cars well can be sexy. Anything can, if you do it capably and confidently. Ladies really like when dudes are good at stuff.

And then, last but not least, we have the Jobs Series. Part one here has links to all the rest. It’s a big ol’ series full of nonsense bullshit jobs and my observations about them.

Six years at what were technically three different photo labs (it’ll make sense in a minute) provided for some very interesting party-story fodder. There was the exhibitionist couple who got off on making us look at their pictures as many times as possible, so after learning how the developing and printing processes worked, the husband started manipulating it. He’d order doubles with one set matte, one set glossy, and then have them scanned to a CD, knowing each of those three things required a separate scan that showed the images on the screen where we color-corrected them. They appeared to be in their 60s and were very glamorous, and the photos tended to show them in upscale places where they would take pictures of themselves flashing people or doing other various “fun” things like peeing on fire hydrants in cocktail dresses or making strangers at gas stations try on a long fur coat that was just covering the woman’s naked body. Once, we got to see a Sprite bottle halfway up her vag. I was impressed.

BONUS series (I clearly love those) that I wrote much earlier on in my newsletter back when I only had around 20 subscribers about moving from Minnesota to Virginia and the things I’ve noticed and learned since then. The links to all of the parts are also included in this first part:

I think it's fair to assume most people I encounter around here who are older than me are some shade of Republican, and I’ve had to explain the very concept of what it means to be transgender to more than one random bar patron, as one example of the typical social attitude you are likely to find around the area. The military is a huge way of life around here, too, and it’s not unusual to have friendships with an IRL expiration date about 3 years into the future when they get new orders. Back in Minneapolis, I didn't know many people my age who were in the military, and it was a lot more rare to meet someone in their 20s or 30s who'd been deployed. Here, half the reason people come from somewhere else has something to do with the military, whether you're stationed at Quantico or a veteran working as a contractor.

I’ve also had some conversations with folks recently about what it was like to be in a relationship with a trans person while they came out, so if you’re new here, you may be interested in the story. Here are two pieces I published about it from two different perspectives. First, finding out:

I wrote this after my ex came out in 2007 and published it here. I had conflicting feelings, as you may imagine:

Never mind how it isn’t fair to you, to hide who you are for so long, to feel afraid to be yourself, to express yourself. And how I don’t know what it’s like. But what about me? Me, me, me. To anyone who knows me, it’s apparently always about me. I can’t help but think that now is not the time to practice selfishness… but what about what you said you wanted for our life, what about the things we talked about together, that we planned, that we were both excited for? Were they lies? Everything you said?

I can’t help but think that they all were… that they all are. Marriage? Kids? Sex? Do I not get to be a bride? A wife? A mother? Yes, I can be. I still get to be. But am I the bride? The wife? The mother? No. Not if I stay. Not if things go the way you say they need to go for you to remain breathing and okay. And I have to be okay with that, I have to be okay with that, in order to continue a life that I thought you promised me from the beginning. I have to be okay with drastically changing my life, my desires, my sexual identity, my entire life, in order to remain with the person that I fell in love with… the person that you, at one point, deliberately portrayed yourself to be.

Then we get to the whole story surrounding the relationship and all its melodrama, violence, and toxicity:

The police did show up that night. Several squads, because the news that Respected Detective Kyle's Dad's son and his girlfriend were having a domestic was too juicy for half the department not to come out and see for themselves. A male and a female officer showed up, as was customary for domestics. They asked me what happened, and I told them. The female officer led me from the apartment in handcuffs while a male officer took photos of Kyle's completely unblemished face where I'd tried so hard to hurt him as badly as he'd hurt me, pent up rage having accumulated over the year and a half of being the subject of his loathing, contempt, humiliation and now, finally, physical violence.

Last but not least (for real this time!), we have my favorite idea, bringing back the Red Tent:

The Red Tent culture could vary in time and commitment levels. Maybe most women would still go to work during the day, but choose to opt out of the rest of regular life afterwards and go straight to the Red Tent instead of her real home that week. This kind of Red Tenter would maybe be a single, younger woman without responsibilities tying her to her home, or maybe she's got a family and this week is her precious time away when her husband or someone else watches the kids and she goes to bleed on some hay with her fellow exhausted moms who suddenly love their periods because they get to have this special bonding time. Pass the bong!

Red Tents wouldn't need to be literal tents (although I think we should stick with the red motif, for sure). They could easily be wings (heh) in large hospitals, near maternity departments and made cozier and more service-oriented. They could be one of the never-ending ideas for what to do with all the abandoned old malls around the country.

Bring back the Red Tent!

…Because I never mean it when I say “last but not least” today, I guess, I also had the chance to appear on other podcasts besides the two I already mentioned. I got to talk with

Prester John's Revenge

about all sorts of things just before the election:

The Xanadu Review: Episode 1- Lirpa Strike

And I just recently chatted with

DeepLeftAnalysis

about some stuff:

Trialogue with Lirpa

And then I published the first podcast ever on Just Saying with

Kryptogal (Kate, if you like)

a few weeks ago:

And a second one, which is an interview with my teenage niece about Zoomer life:

Expect more interviews with interesting folks and plenty of discussions about what’s going on in the world, in podcast format, in 2025!

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah and all the rest of the ongoing and upcoming holidays! Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in 2025 (and before, probably, because let’s be real, I’m not logging off)!

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1. You’ll see a lot more, much older stuff in the archives from my older publications I had hosted on Wordpress and Blogspot back in the day that I imported over here.