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February 2021

Hi. I’m Jim, your host for what is to be the brightest gem in your inbox today and every other day you get it. You’ve found yourself already ankle deep in the Halfman newsletter, the only place on the Internet where you can read about design, rock ’n roll, remedial economics, snacking, the state of the world and obscure references all in one place.

If a friend, colleague or loved one forwarded this to you, you should be aware you owe them your life. Anyhow, the least you could do is honour them and their efforts to bring joy to our little lives and…

Of course if you hate that person, despite them saving your life, you can always unsubscribe here. You can also check out all the back issues, if you don’t have access to printed and framed version on your wall right now.

Bastion’s Last Stand pt.2

Way, way back in newsletter.009 I wrote about the first of a many parted screed on the torrid, storied and lovelorn life of a product I had created called Bastion: “Bastion’s Last Stand pt.1: How Not to Develop A New Way of Reading.” Well, here is the second part. There is not going to be any others I don’t think.

TLDR: I got nowhere with my first efforts, tried a different thing that also didn’t work, pity party, then got back to making a fun book.

Bastion’s Last Stand pt.2: When to Stop

The Jim Kosem Story Explosion

We’ll see if I can keep this going. This is the first instalment in what is due to be a three part story, a triptych really, of a man’s quest to set the universe to rights and finally be able to turn his ordinarily disadvantageous lactose intolerance into revenge against the injustices of the UK Conservative party.

“When Cheese Means Revenge pt.1: Pizza”

Here’s a sample because I love all of you:

John Higgins knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was lactose intolerant. He had been tested for it. He had spent his entire life under the cruel, mocking gaze of countless milkshakes, ice cream sundaes and pizza. He had the odd bite of French cheese after a fancy meal about once a year and would suffer horribly for it. He always assumed this curse never had a purpose, nothing to teach him, nothing that stood out in his life until now.

Read the rest

March Self-care Tips

Scrambled eggs

You know what they look like. Fluffy, perfect, jam-packed with protein and promise for the day. And they can also save your night from the litres of beer. Have some today.

The Anti-Bodies “I sneezed in my mask”

In their own words “For the first time, Brothers Pants Pantsley and Lee Sechrist team up to create something truly stupid and enjoyable.“

Snotty (seriously no irony there) vaguely Misfits in approach punk rock from the Cleveland’s own Sechrist brothers. Finally someone has made covid-themed punk rock. If one day, and I’ll wait a couple more decades if I have to, I get to do something this ridiculous, correct and awesome with my brother I would be stoked.

https://m.soundcloud.com/lee-sechrist/i-sneezed-in-my-mask-1

Language Lowdown

This month Jon Ryder (that’s right a real life, honest to goodness writer) breaks it all down for us

We are all fernweh

Are you feeling farsick right now? Of course you are. You’re feeling it right inside your very bones. It’s crawling through your actual skin, godammit. ‘Fernweh’ is an untranslatable German word describing ‘the stress of always being in familiar surroundings’, a distance-pain, an ache and longing for far-off places.

At least, it used to be untranslatable.

Now we have a raft of words with a similar meaning including covideous-nightmare, coronagonyagonyagony and destroymeforIwillnevertrulybreatheagain.

Language, eh? What would we talk about without it?

Top 10 Things Every Blog Thinks You Actually Have Time For

So you’re going to have to go elsewhere for the monthly Top 10, namely here, but I’m interested in elevating Top10’s as an art form, so here’s another one.

1. Learning a language you don’t really even like

2. Baking

3. Self improvement in general

4. Penmanship

5. Sobriety

6. Caring about the blogger’s personal life

7. Caring about what the blogger looks like

8. Self care or even caring in general at this point

9. Not having a job like the blogger

10. Top 10’s about blogs you and I hate

Top 10 Feb

Oh wait, I did do a real Top 10 didn’t I? Somehow it ended up like the rest of this darned newsletter past the month deadline. Don’t you worry, I noticed as well that it’s March already.

Anyhow, just to give you some indication of the true power of the February Top 10, this is number 6.

6. Punk Band Reunion At The Wedding - SNL - I’ve dreamed long and hard about dad themed hardcore bands for the past decade. One of them, Mydlyfe Kri$i$ never happened. It was a hardcore band that friends of mine and I were supposed to form when we were 40 and really, and I mean really, pissed off about things like mortgages and our kids. It would have been like this clip which I watch before I go to bed, except without the Suicidal Tendencies breakdown and more Minor Threat obviously.

Read the rest

Office Crisis of Conformity

Needless to say, offices still inspire hate and disappointment more than high school in the 80’s ever possibly could have. Their insipid culture is the sad, sweet symptom of our dire times, a calm and clean sweatshop for our tired minds to slowly rot in day by day under the cruel fluorescent glare.

Watching the first in the terribly fascinating and incredibly well presented series, “Creating a Culture of Innovation” by someone who actually admits to knowing me, a one Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, I gobbled up the tearing apart of this “Myth of Serendipity.” Offices aren’t places where these mythical accidental brainstorms happen. No amount of Norman Foster pixie dust and swooping, class-encased curves hugging a grand foyer is going to get two people to run into each and cure cancer or invent a time machine. Nuh-uh. No way. No how.

People don’t use lounges where all the magic is supposed to happen because looking like lounging looks like not working. That is a fact. As office populations are squeezed more and more every day the idea of serendipity and interaction is more of a function of architects selling things like staircases and nothing more.

Go buy her book and find more about the lecture series and read more about Alex here.

Super Serious Forwards

I guess it’s time. It’s time I out myself as the closet cartography enthusiast I am. I was actually talking to a school about a PhD in Human Geography which I told no one about until just now. But these are the Map Men and they are very open about their cartography, unafraid and quite funny, whimsical even, when they explain places and maps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYNzqgU7na4&cdlcid=5e18a4d1a806e27817469dfc

Absolutely beautiful visual and textual essay on newsletters, RSS and how it relates to writing and how the Internet works for the world. Somebody fund this guy, and well me while you’re at it, to save the internet.

https://www.robinrendle.com/essays/newsletters

Colophon

This newsletter endorses Team Eagle vs Mancrush Skateboarding, Elder, household spite as a contact sport, slide guitar, Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires, Bl’ast, The Pleasure Seekers, Turkish Funk, pluralism, cowbells in just about any music and Bitter Southerner Magazine.

Ride in Peace and Rest in Power Pat Bleil. Some day brother we’ll meet again to skate a school parking lot in the sky. Same to Jim Angeles, the guy who I credit with most of my life really, getting me started skateboarding and going to art school, ripping that vert and swishing slopes up there somewhere. Ride on brothers.

Thanks, all of you out there. See you next month.

- Jim